Dream 83
It is dark. The lights on the bridge illuminate the property a little bit but for the most part it is cold and dark.
Builder, Gatherer and Uriel stand around me while Michael hammers at the dome above.
A forth angel joins us and Builder speaks first.
Builder:
“Speak your plans and not your fears son of sorrow.’
Gatherer:
“Speak as wheat, judge not the chaff son of sorrow.”
Uriel:
“Speak what you know, not what you feel son of sorrow.”
New Angel:
“This life is temporary, gone in the blink of an eye. The purpose of this life is to exercise your free will in choosing to confirm love or contend against it. Do all in love. Any battle won without love is a battle lost. Light drives out the darkness and love casts out fear. Be of good cheer, for I am with you always.”
I am wrenched from that spot in the presence of angels. Backwards in time to my first day at first grade. I cry when I am dropped off at this horrible place and wet my pants with fear. My mother drives off, leaving me there at the mercy of a smiling teacher. Every part of me does not want to be here. Every part of my soul shouts danger, danger. Parents, the law, the teachers, all older than five year old me. I have no choice, I must submit. My pants are wet and I smell like urine. One of the kids in class calls me a cry baby. He is right. I wish that I was dead.I don’t want to be here among these humans. I felt it for the first time when I was four years old and my family was in an alcohol related fight at a party at our home. My uncle let me taste brandy and coke and I remember feeling that this world was evil and all in it were demons.
The teasing in school does not stop.
I have curly hair and am a sensitive child who cries easily and cannot concentrate in class.By grade three the entire class, including my teacher are calling me female dog names.
I wish I was dead. This place is so cruel. Why am I here?
In grade five I see older kids picking on someone. I know how it feels and step in to try and convince them to stop. They punch me in the face and throw my books into the urinal, then shove my head in the toilet and flush it.
The first embers of hatred for humanity are born within me and I hunger daily that I would be taken from this earth.
Two different older boys walk the same path home that I do.
I have curly hair. I am sensitive. I cry easily. They find this entertaining.
They bully me incessantly for my entire primary school life. Making me eat cow manure, burning me with matches, punching me in the back if the head, making me carry their bags. My father tells me to stand up for myself often. I can’t. I am smaller, I hate fighting. I try to fight back on many occasions and the bigger boys find it hilarious. So much so that at school they humiliate me publicly to get me to react. I hate them. I hate humanity. I wish that I was never born.
I hate going home.
I hate the smell of alcohol.
I hate going to school.
This world is evil and all in it are demons.
I am ten years old. I marvel at the perversion and ice cold indifference of mankind. I have been forced to do things for an uncle and his son and my parents don’t believe me.
A female cousin is forced to do things to me. Neither of us understand. This is just life among the demons. I think that all children are forced into the bidding of their elders.
I am twelve. I wish that I was dead. I cannot be what these creatures are. I try to be but I do not fit.
Why am I even on this planet among these barbarians? Why can I not be friends with someone who is black? Why do they call them those names? Why do my friends talk about girls with such filthy words. I wish I was dead. I don’t belong here. I try to talk like them and act like them but it does not work. I don’t understand. Why don’t I fit into this world? Why be born into someplace unnatural? Surely there was a mistake?
I try to be a racist. I try to be perverted. I am thirteen. I find that I want these physical things that society has forced on me but I am constantly riddled with guilt about every thought.
The bullying continues. I hate school so much. Why was I sent to this hell hole? Why do strong people and good looking people control everything? Why do good people have no power?
I hate this life so much. I wish that I had never been born.
I am fifteen in a new school. I am the only person in the new school without a uniform. We don’t have the money for the uniform. I am in trouble all the time with teachers for my lack of uniform. I am fifteen. How is this my fault? School kids call me a ‘white kaffir’, a highly racist term for poor black people. I wish I was dead.
I try to hang myself from the hostel staircase but the light fixture breaks. I am in fist fights almost every day. The hatred for mankind within me grows to a silent rage. I want to be good. I want to be righteous but those things don’t fit here. This is hell.
We can’t afford this school. I go back to my old one. The bullies are waiting but I am different.
The fights are so violent and severe that I am suspended often. I want to kill them all. I hate them so much that I want to pour fuel on them and watch them scream as they burn.
Why is this world so easy for the strong and the good looking?
I am still fifteen, still called ugly, still sensitive. I wish I was dead.
I am sixteen. We have moved to a different state. The school there is easier socially. I have given my life to Jesus. I have more confidence but I still hate school with all my heart. I feel ugly, I don’t fit in. I want to be good, the world wants to be evil.
I travel with a pastor to a township and see the reality of poverty for the first time.
I can’t begin to understand how mankind let this happen.
Nobody around me seems to care. It seems normal to them. I am so young, what can I do?
This earth is hell and humans are demons. I try to speak of the subject to my elders. They are such racists that they rebuke me for trying to solve something that they call cultural and engrained and call me a ‘kaffirboetie’ – a racist term for those who befriend black people.
I hate this world so much. So so much. If there is a god, he is a cruel, horrible master and his children are just like him.
I am seventeen. My church friends joke about how ugly I am consistently. I still hate going home. The fighting, the alcohol, the lack. My sisters hate it too. Home is hell.
We all sleep out as much as we can.
For me school is hell, church is hell, home is hell, earth is hell and those who live in the townships have it worse. There is no way out. I am eighteen and I know this and the powerlessness and futility of this horrible place washes over me constantly.
A school friend has a gun. I sleep over so that I can shoot myself. That night his family is asleep and the gun is within easy reach. I work up the courage to pull the trigger under my chin but the gun won’t go off. I flip the safety and try again but it fails. I am emotionally exhausted. I go to bed. What the heck, can’t even die. I am trapped in this hell.
I am nineteen. My mother takes her life. I battle with the emotions of it but silently congratulate her. Her life was hell. This earth is hell. Humanity is a selfish virus. Death is release.
The dream speeds up through my ministry life, my exposure to corporate Christianity, the indifferent ignorance of christians, multiple betrayals and rejections, over and over I am exposed to the hell that is humanity.
I am thirty one years old. I have achieved more than I ever thought I would and risen to great power in international corporate christianity. But I don’t fit. I cant see the God of the bible in anything we do. Poverty is a side ministry, nobody really cares. I focus my ministry on young people but nobody really cares. Its about money and numbers, money and numbers. Nothing has changed since that first day in school. Even in christianity it is the good looking and the strong that have power. I have power and I have become a bully. I hate it. I hate myself. I hate this version of Christianity. There must be a better way? The depression has taken such a hold on me that all I can think of is suicide. It rides me day and night, relentlessly dogging my heels. I beg God to take me each night. I want no part of this world or its selfish citizens.
Why is humanity so cold? Why are they like rats in boxes, concerned only for their own box?
How can they possibly not see how wrong everything is?
I hate Christians most of all. Spreading their gospel among those who don’t need it. Avoiding the hard work which is the poor and the youth. Favoring those with money or influence.
I see how the good looking, the wealthy and the talented get most of the attention and it makes me want to puke. I hate this world and all in it.
I am in this state for ten years. Ten years of begging God to kill me. Ten years of multiple failed suicide attempts. Ten years of seeing the picture of humanity get worse and worse.
At 41 the depression lifts. At 42 the dreams start.
It is present day, my body sleeps in the small caravan on the property beneath Michael’s calf.
My spirit is on the other side of the state line on bridge, overlooking the water.
A dark mist swirls around me and I sense the presence of an old companion.
The demon stands next to me looking up at Michael hammering at the dome.
He looks like an angel, stripped of his glory. As tall as Uriel and the others but I can see his hard face in the light on the bridge.
Demon
“You should be dead.”
Me:
“I am. Just not the way you planned.”
He sniggers and nods at the black mist around my feet.
Demon:
“You will never shake what I have placed upon you. All eventually succumb. And christians are especially stupid when it comes to strongholds of the mind. They believe such things can be removed. It is a part of you now courier. It will always be and you will eventually succumb.”
Me:
“That may be so in your mind demon. But I am alive by the grace of God and as long as He has grace and as long as He is God it shall remain so.”
The demon looks at the caravan and tent on the land and sniggers.
Demon:
“We may not have the access that we once had but how long will you last on that land? You are a white beggar again. Look at you! You own nothing, no longer famous, no income, not even your land. Forty two years and this is all you have to show for it? An old caravan squatting on someone else’s land. You have become the very thing you have tried to fix.
You are just as pathetic and poor as you were as when you were a child. And look how those with power laugh at you! Do you think anyone even reads your stupid dreams? Or cares?
Look at the broken promises and false commitments.
You will achieve nothing here courier.
You will soon be evicted from this land and you will be mine once again. And this time I will succeed. You will die by your own hand.”
Me:
“If God deems it necessary to place me in your hands again then so be it. I am His for better or worse. This earth has nothing that I desire, it never has and it never will. I am here to serve the son, nothing else.
But I will not die from my own hand. In this you have my word demon. You had forty one years and you failed.
Surely you know by now that my life has never been my own?
The very blood in my veins belongs to God. You can neither threaten nor entice me, I am already dead.
If I am to live in the gutter, alone and miserable and depressed so that it may fit a small function to reach another in the gutter then so be it. I may not be happy but I shall always be obedient. I have tasted what this world has to offer and I find it lacking. The caravan is fine. What matters most is that I am doing as I am commanded.
Under His command is the purest of protection demon. You can do nothing but talk and I have all night.”
The principality looks at me with such hatred that his eyes almost pull back into his head.
Demon:
“You will fail. YOU WILL FAIL. YOU ARE NOTHING. NOTHING!!!”
Me:
“Fail at what? I’m attempting nothing, simply doing as instructed. And you are right, I am nothing. The kingdom is all. I like that a lot. I have tried fixing pieces of this earth, it is pointless. I would rather just be a cog in the kingdom machine than go through that horrible exercise again. The kingdom is all!”
The demon disappears in a fit of impotent rage. The black mist still swirls around my feet.
I sigh. I know that this depression that was part of my life for forty one years has become so engrained in my mind that the renewal of my mind will take a while. At least I am aware of it now.
I am back on the land with Uriel. Michael continues to hammer at the dome above us.
Uriel:
“The thorn in your flesh.”
Me:
“Indeed.”
Uriel:
“You will endure son of sorrow. And because of your faithfulness, many shall be set free.”
Me:
“The sales pitches don’t really work on me. Just get the land paid for, I really don’t want to see that demon again.”
Uriel:
“The Holy Spirit speaks to many, many shall be obedient, the vision shall come to pass as you have been shown.”
Me:
“Forgive my skepticism. I have not seen much to believe that Christians believe in anything but church. I still don’t think that they care about the masses in poverty but I shall remain obedient.”
Uriel:
“Such words make you sound very arrogant son of sorrow. You are not the only one who cares.”
Me:
“True. It is how I feel though. I look forward to seeing those who care jump into action. Nothing but the advance of the kingdom will bring me any joy. This world needs heaven to advance and I would love to have some faith in more than just a handful of humanity.”
Uriel:
“You shall be pleasantly surprised at just how many handfuls there are son of sorrow.”
Me:
“I look forward to it.”
I wake up.