CATEGORY: WINDING DOWN

I want to record my most unforgettable dream.  I had this dream shortly before leaving Port Townsend.

The setting was “my” house, only it was not my own house; it was a similar house, but smaller.  It was actually one of the small square houses with porches across the front that are on Lawrence Street between the theater and the Baptist church.  

I was in the back yard ranking wood.  I had made a rank about four feet high that was shaped like a square U.  Its bottom end was toward the house. The open end was toward the alley that ran behind the library.  In actuality the alley and the house are a block apart, but in my dream the house was where the library is.

I was inside the U of the ranked wood.  Two priests dressed all in black, one old and one young, got out of a car in the alley and came toward me.  They stopped at the opening into the U and started talking to me.  They had seemingly trapped me inside the U, but I didn’t feel threatened.  Then the priests walked to a position on the outside of the U near the house.  They were still talking to me.

Suddenly a black panther appeared behind them near the left corner of the house and walked across the back of the house and up onto the back porch which was indented into the center of the main body of the house.  I watched it as the priests were talking to me.  At the left end of the porch was an open door into the kitchen.  The panther walked into the kitchen.

Then I was in the body of the panther.  When it walked into the kitchen (which was a corridor type kitchen extending the full length of the left side of the house) the kitchen was full of people having a party, talking, laughing and drinking.  The panther wove its way right through all the people, without any of them seeing it.  It went out into the front entry hall from the front end of the kitchen, at which point it ceased to be me, but was a panther again.  

At the same time, I had walked around the opposite side of the house and into the entry hall via the front door.   When the panther and I saw each other, there was instant recognition between us.  As we came together, it stood up on its hind legs, put its front paws on my shoulders and looked directly into my eyes.  It said, “From one cat to another. ”  I felt like I had been touched by a God.

There were a few people standing around in the dimly lit living room at the opposite side of the house from the kitchen. The panther went in there and I could see it putting its paws on the shoulders of a couple of other people.

I have never been able to understand this dream. Why have I rejected religion, both new and old, and become a black cat?