hypocritepoet

Our family is attending a convention in Ukraine. Me, Angie mom and dad, Penny, misty, Josh and Hjordis, Heubels, Paynes and Tippetts… Everyone we know is there. Convention is at a big covered coliseum. From afar it looks like Roman coliseum. Convention is like old days with speakers and reverb, so great. Lett is speaking when the shelling starts. “No weapon formed against us will succeed, but we better seek shelter if we don’t want to experience the resurrection.” Lett belts out with an index finger held out in his usual performative manner. We all head out with everyone, but our group gets separated in panic. I find myself outside without anyone I know.

I managed to get trapped between line of Russians and Ukrainian soldiers with axes. I think they are coming to kill us JWs caught in a field. But, I manage to slip between fray as they hack each other to death. I run to the shelter set up for us (underground concrete shelter). From on top of mound I can see Angie still in the coliseum so I run back to get her out when I run into Josh, mom and misty. They explain that there is a queue to get out and Angie is stuck in line as they are only letting a few out at a time.

The brothers are reluctant to let the friends out but the coliseum seems to be target. When Angie finally gets out, we run across field and find Penny. Try helping her go faster but there is a limit to her ambulation. So, I insist on sending angie ahead to shelter while I help my elderly grandmother.

When we finally arrive I realize how claustrophobic the interior is with tiny doorways and 2’ thick concrete walls, very low ceilings. This is our hotel, it’s a nightmare and I worry that if we are shelled that it will become a tomb. But the brothers in charge insist it is the safest place we can be. Christino, Josh and I share a bunk. They leave to explore the bunker and I go looking for Angie. I find the kitchen and it is tiny, library is single long row with shelves of books.

The many hospital rooms are large operating theaters with nurses dressed in 1960’s whites fixing operating tables with straps so patients don’t slide off during bombardments. I see tiny hyperbaric chambers built into the walls for burn victims. They look like glass and metal tombs.

I sneak out to watch nonstop shelling of the coliseum. Is the most unbelievable thing I have ever seen. I wonder if we’ll be able to have convention tomorrow and worry about the men with axes. I hear the whistle of an incoming shell. I run just before I suddenly wake up.

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Dreaming of War

When I look back at this dream, I don't think the war itself is really the subject. The war is the mechanism that strips everything down to its essentials.

The dream begins with almost everyone I know gathered together at a convention in Ukraine. Family, friends, congregation—my entire social world seems to be there. The convention itself has an almost nostalgic quality to it. It looks like an old Roman coliseum, and the speakers have that old-fashioned reverb that reminds me of conventions from another era.

It is familiar. It is communal. It is safe.

And then the shelling starts.

That feels important to me. The thing that is supposed to be a place of safety and belonging suddenly becomes the target.

Lett's line is almost absurdly perfect for the dream: No weapon formed against us will succeed, but we better seek shelter if we don't want to experience the resurrection.

There's a contradiction buried in that sentence. Faith says we are protected. Reality says we should probably get underground.

I think that tension is at the heart of the dream.

I grew up with a very strong framework for understanding the world. There were answers. There were promises. There were structures that were supposed to tell me what was true and where I belonged. But this dream takes that certainty and drops it into an actual war zone.

Suddenly, believing that I am safe isn't enough.

I have to decide where safety actually is.

Then everyone gets separated.

That's when the dream becomes frightening for me—not simply because people are shooting and shelling each other, but because I can't find my people.

I end up trapped between Russian and Ukrainian soldiers, both armed with axes, and I assume they are going to kill us. But I don't fight them. I watch for an opening and slip through while they destroy each other.

That feels very much like my own survival instinct. I'm not the strongest person in the room. I'm not the warrior. I'm the person watching, calculating, waiting for the moment when I can get through without becoming part of the violence.

I make it to the shelter.

But I can see Angie still in the coliseum.

So I go back.

That may be the clearest thing the dream tells me about myself. I can't really accept being safe while someone I love is still exposed. The shelter doesn't mean much if the people I care about aren't in it.

I find Angie, and eventually she gets out. Then I find Penny.

Penny can't move quickly enough, and there is a moment where I have to choose between getting everyone to safety as efficiently as possible and staying with the person who can't keep up.

I send Angie ahead.

I stay with Penny.

I think that says something about the kind of responsibility I carry. When things become catastrophic, I don't necessarily choose the fastest route to safety. I feel compelled to go back for the person who is vulnerable.

And then I finally reach the bunker.

Except the bunker is awful.

The doors are tiny. The walls are two feet thick. The ceilings are low. Everything is cramped and concrete. It is supposedly the safest place we could possibly be, but I immediately think of it as a nightmare.

If we are shelled, the shelter could become a tomb.

That image seems almost too obvious, but I think it is the most important image in the dream.

The thing designed to protect me can also imprison me.

Safety and confinement have become the same thing.

The hospital makes the same point in a different way. The patients are strapped onto operating tables so they won't slide off during bombardments. Burn victims are placed inside tiny hyperbaric chambers built into the walls. Even the medical equipment looks like little glass and metal tombs.

Everything is designed to preserve life.

Everything is also designed to contain the body.

That feels like a metaphor for some of the larger structures in my life. Religion, family, belonging, identity, responsibility—all of these things can provide shelter. They can give life meaning and keep me from being blown apart by the chaos outside.

But any structure strong enough to protect me can also become strong enough to hold me in place.

Eventually I can't stay underground.

I sneak outside and watch the coliseum being destroyed.

I think that may be the moment when the dream becomes less about survival and more about witnessing.

The coliseum represents the world I came from: community, convention, shared belief, familiar people, familiar rituals. And I'm standing outside watching it get destroyed.

I don't know whether I'm grieving it, fascinated by it, afraid of it, or all three.

I just know I need to see it.

I need to understand what is happening.

That's something I recognize in myself. Even when something is frightening, I have a tendency to step outside the immediate experience and watch it. I want to understand the thing that is happening to me.

And then I hear the whistle of the incoming shell.

I run.

I wake up.

There is no resolution.

Maybe that's the point.

The dream doesn't tell me whether the shelter survives. It doesn't tell me whether the coliseum is completely destroyed. It doesn't tell me what happens to everyone tomorrow.

It leaves me in that moment just before impact.

And when I think about it now, I don't think the dream is really about war.

It's about what happens when the structures that have always told me I am safe suddenly don't feel safe anymore.

It's about the tension between faith and reality, belonging and individuality, safety and freedom, self-preservation and responsibility.

Most of all, it's about what I do when everything starts falling apart.

I go back.

I look for the people I love.

I help the person who can't keep up.

And eventually, when I am safely underground, I come back out to see what happened to the world I came from.

Maybe that is the real dream.

Not Will I survive?

But:

When the old world can no longer guarantee my safety, what am I willing to carry with me into whatever comes next?