As a little introduction to this post look out for a key repeated phrase and concept. Some of you who read this or all of you may experience the repeated theme. I will explore its meaning after recounting the dream.
I was helping out at an inspection of royalty at some kind of parade. What I was doing was checking with higher ranking staff whether people in the photoshoot were all present and reminding them who was relevant in the line up. I ran through a list of names that could be in the picture they agreed or disagreed with me as if they were humouring me. I did it first with a group of men and then I turned to find ladies which I wasn’t ready for. I was feeling out of place in both instances.
I then was on a balcony trying to find where I was to sit. It was like I was in the royal box. I was out of place again with a group of really tall men squashed up against there legs looking out onto a parade and having to sing a song.
The next dream I was standing on the corner of a hedgeline. I think I was waiting for my companions who did not appear. I’m sure I had seen or heard them on the other side of the hedge. I started to walk along inside the hedgeline habitat which was varied and broader than any hedgeline in reality. At an opening in the hedgeline I looked to see through whether I had missed them. It felt like I was in another country even though the hedgeline was very British.
I then reached a fortress like facility a bit like a church. It was an old Roman like historical place. As I went up to this high ceilinged hall part of the edifice, I suddenly got excited as I was looking at a rectangular pool. The pool was out of place. I turned to someone called Asator who was there and said this and realised as I said it that it was very shallow and wondered whether it was for washing feet. We had a look around at some of the other building features too.
Alienation occurs when a person withdraws or becomes isolated from their environment or from other people. People who show symptoms of alienation will often reject loved ones or society. They may also show feelings of distance and estrangement, including from their own emotions.
From a Google search
(Quoted 5 Dec 2019)
Last week I was reading about a young woman who suffered from monachopsis. I wondered what that was so I looked it up.
The subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place.
Like the psychologist in the article I read says, we all ‘suffer’ from this from time to time.
The only person who I could approach was Asator. Asator means gift of God. This gift reaches out to me, to us. The recognition of something exciting to me was unique – seeing the water feature. I misread it at first but was able to share my wonder with The Gift of God. Asator is the last character in the dream I converse with. The rest of the dream is identifying this issue of being out of place like a parable. Extreme contrast is used to make the point like the example of royalty. I don’t experience royalty in my day to day life. My dream conveys an extreme to convey being ‘out of place‘ – one with people and one with the environment e.g. the hedgeline.
(There is a link in the dream to service as well as I found the place where the feet are washed. This connects back to being alert and the words of Jesus in Luke 12:37-38 and John 13:1-17).
To me the meaning is clear embrace monachopsis and see it as a stepping stone to move yourself from despair and loneliness to The Loving Father who is with us. Share your anxiety and burden with Him through a relationship made possible by Jesus. Let the flow of The Holy Spirit enable you in this by trusting him. He has made it possible to be part of his earthly family. In true family we share our burdens.
Some of us in the church experience a similar ‘out of place‘ when we are at the church building with others. I recommend this article I found when I looked up on Google – cure for monachopsis, which explains more about the matter and how it relates to following Jesus.
We all I think go through feeling out of place yet we can use this to connect us to heaven here and now, where ultimately when heaven and earth come fully together that feeling we have will be that of being ‘in place‘. Heaven and earth come together in Jesus this is where we can get the sense of being ‘in place.’
POSTSCRIPT: I only noticed after going back to check my links that the author of the article on Ecclesiastical monachopsis has links also to Forest Church on his website and an explanation to what that is!