It's one I've had at least once a month since I was six. It doesn't change too drastically, but it is seldom just the same twice. Just for the hell of it I started writing details down when I was in 9th grade, and over the years they have been pretty consistent. It's pretty tame, but it would be nice to have some insight into it. Also, the nights I have it, the dream won't suddenly change like they often do otherwise, but will stay in this subject till I wake up.
I am walking along a dirt road with a wood rail fence to one side and deep ravine to the other side, and trees that crowd the road. As I walk, the sun starts to come up and it's tangy out and windy and feels like rain at any moment. Every now and then I can hear yelling, singing, and popping or cracking. There is a smokey smell in the air. Pretty soon I come to a side road and take it, because I can hear voices on the wind.
There the road widens out, and there horses and mules &c. tied to trees and a fence. There's sort of an open-faced loafing shed full of horses and mules. They aren't too pleased. They're nervous and skittish. There's an old wooden church, and that's where the singing is coming from. (Does that mean this is music related now?) There are double doors, and the church is seven steps above the ground, on brick pillars. The Left-hand door is the one with the knob, and it sticks, so when I push it open first it doesn't want to go, then it bangs against the wall and a few people look back. (Here's where it gets funny...sometimes I remember 'Oh! The door sticks!' and manage to open it a little more quietly.) There is a tiny vestibule with coat hooks to either side, and doors into the sanctuary straight ahead. The inside pair of doors is propped open with flat irons. Always the wind will gust just as I open the door, and blow leaves in before I shut it, and the leaves'll usually drift in and settle in the sanctuary. A little more than half the time a leaf lands in the hat of a middle-aged lady in the middle on the right, and she brushes it from her head without looking. She is wearing a purplish-brown coat and like most of the other women, gloves.
There is always a baby towards the front right that has a raspy cough, and two kids in almost matching black coats in the back row left that turn around and smile as I push the door shut. Sometimes the man next to them pokes them and they turn around, sometimes not. About half the time a woman gets out and waits for me to get seated in a pew in the middle left, occasionally there is a spot in a back one. There is no piano or organ. They are singing old hymns, mostly ones we all would recognize. It seems like "Babylon is Fallen" is one that comes up a lot (I knew it from the dream before I recalled ever hearing it awake-when I heard it for what I thought was the first time awake I was able to sing the words to it.) There is one fragment of a hymn I have never heard outside of the dream: "Let us drink of the living waters, that flow from the heavenly throne, And we'll meet in a land of our fathers, in a world apart from our own." I have searched a long time and never found that one! During the lull in singing or pauses between sings I can faintly hear the popping and banging from outside, and now and then a yell or shout. Usually a horse will whinny and there is a donkey that has a rattling sort of a bray. The air inside smells like smoke, cloth, and must, but isn't unpleasant. The windows are open a little at the top. There is a round upright stove inside the doors to the left, with wire racks round the pipe with a few hats hanging on them. Sometimes the stove's warm, but more often it isn't. Because of the trees outside the church seems isolated or in the country. The walls are varnished wainscot, the ceiling is open to the rafters with beams that run across overhead. There us a hanging glass oil lamp from each beam over the aisle, and lamps between the windows in black brackets with reflectors on them. None of the lamps are lit. There are four windows on each side and one to wither side of the doors. The lectern has a small round window high up on the wall behind it. The other windows are narrow and tall, with pointed tops. The edges are squares of stained glass, and the centres are etched in sort of a diamond pattern. The second from the back on the left has a cracked piece in the centre, that is repaired with a piece of lead came. The colored pieces make the sanctuary all different colors as the sun shines in. Occasionally the light will cause some of the women on the left side to shield their eyes or tip their hats and bonnets. At some point during the singing someone nearly always knocks a cane from the back of the pew in front of them, and they have to step out into the aisle to pick it up.
A short stocky(but not fat) man with long white hair is in the right front row next to a woman in a Greenish-black dress with black shiny buttons. If I manage not to wake up he goes to the lectern and reads a passage; usually from Revelation or Ecclesiastes. The Bible is small, battered and black bound with lots of scraps of paper sticking out, and the lector/pastor has a strange sort of a voice. It's strong, but reedy and sort of reminds me of an Irish/Scottish brogue. He is wearing a long tailed cot, and a waist coat, and there is a silver wellington watch chain with a cross inside of a circle hanging below the tee. His beard is white and square cut across the bottom, with long sideburns. He warns about "paths which run dim" and "unnatural silence, from which something may arise." Once he made a reference to the place called Shiloh, but in the Biblical sense.
I have never slept long enough to hear the whole sermon. (I would venture a guess that I am one of the few who would admit to sleeping while the pastor is preaching, and dearly wishing I could stay that way until he is finished.) When I wake up it sometimes takes several moments to realize I AM awake, and there have been times I can still smell smoke or musty old building for a few moments after I wake.
So what do you make of all that? (Besides the fact that I am nuts, we already know that!)