I have a dream

The terrible events in Norway had a big effect on me.  I didn't watch any of the news coverage, just scanned the headlines and skipped almost all the details, like I knew it was going to bother me a lot.  It did, that night a weird dream came to me.  After deciding not to write about the dream, I saw this story about the catholic church stealing babies from underage women for adoption and realized it needed to be told.   I was raised in the catholic church, most of the time attended catholic schools.  I became completely indoctrinated swallowed in unending oceans of liturgy and scripture.  I went to the seminary for a year.  Which was fortunate, because at the Jesuit Seminary I attended, there was a great library, and a fact filled religious history class.  It was just the catholic history but that was enough to convince me that I wanted no part of that church.  That was 45 years ago but it took a long time to get all that brainwashing out of my head.  That's the background for the dream.  I'm not sure what the dream says except that the stain of religion runs deep into the psyche and the terror it induces is stronger than the fear of death.   

I was outside standing in the dark on a clear night in front of an imposingly large temple.  There was a single large slab door slowly opening with a golden glow cutting into the night.  About 10 feet in front of the door and extending as far as I could see in the gloom was a very large metal gate and an attached metal fence like the kind you see around ball parks or stadiums, large sturdy crowd control gates and fence.  But there were no crowds just me in the dark, and soon through the door came two figures in silhouette.  One looked a little like a demon and the other looked like a robed deity.  They charged the locked gate and began to rip and tear at the metal rods with great strength and ferocity, they were coming for me.  In a sequence similar to closeups in movies, suddenly their faces appeared together filling my entire vision.  They were warped, twisted in a violent almost frothing rage.   It was a scary closeup, I knew the big sturdy gate wouldn't hold them for long and that running was futile.  I looked up at the sky while they were ripping the fence and gate apart.  I noticed the big dipper didn't look quite right, there were about 5 extra stars!  As I looked up they suddenly got very very bright, simultaneously and matching luminosity.  It was thrilling and impressive.  The five lights stood out from the rest of the stars being about ten times brighter than all the surrounding stars but not bright enough that they hurt my eyes.  Then the 5 lights slowly wheeled into a perfect  delta formation and then with the speed of meteorites, they blazed in unison across the sky.  The last thing visible in my dream was the fading light from the streaking five stars, and one thought came; "at the last moment they let me know that we are not alone in the universe".  I smiled at that thought and realized everything was going to be okay.  I was still getting killed by the two religious demons, but they only had one shot at me.  Anyway, that's when I awoke from the dream and felt thoughtful but not frightened.  Later, when it occurred to me, that the aliens could have easily rescued me, I wondered why they didn't.  The idea of rescue from the two approaching demons never came to me in the dream.  Somehow, it seemed that it wasn't the aliens job, or business to rescue elderly atheists from rampaging deities.  But, it was fantastic and reassuring to have seen them.  
 

Its been my belief for years that the existence of alien life or civilizations is the demise of major religions.   I can't believe that  the bible believers got away with the flat earth and the sun revolving around the earth baloney, no evidence for the flood, or DNA evidence stipulating that humans descended from a population of at least 10,000 humans that completely invalidated the Adam and Eve fable.  But lets see them try to wiggle out of the discovery of off-earth life when genesis doesn't mention another sun or  planet around that sun, and  life on another planet.  Lets see how they try and spin the aliens escape from the "all encompassing flood" on another solar system.  Ahh, but spin it they will.

***Update***

I originally wrote this post the day after the dream occurred.  However, for reasons that puzzled me was unable to post it.  Even after rereading and rewriting the post several times, I always felt reticent about publishing it.  Last week I read this excellent post by Miranda Celeste "the Serious Consequence of Childhood Religious Indoctrination".  She describes, far more eloquently than I could, exactly how these early brainwashing exercises affect a person throughout their lives.  Miranda wrote:

"Each time I write about Catholicism, particularly when the post is personal in any way, I feel hesitant and nervous and guilty about it. I suppose that's yet another indicator of the power of childhood religious indoctrination. Its after-effects don't seem to ever fully disappear."

The "nervous, guilty and hesitant" feeling she described rang true and fit, my previously unexplained hesitancy about posting the dream.   I haven't been to a catholic church in 45 years and its damn annoying and embarrassing to find oneself still being affected by their ridiculous dogma. I'm not sure which is worse being devoured by the church's demons in my dreams or the residual effects of childhood indoctrination in my waking activities.  A big thank you to Miranda and a one digit salute to the church.