The dreams are often the same. The dead pass before my eyes and, at my age, I wonder if they are calling to me. I remember a few months before my mother died, she would dream of her family long gone. And she, too, would wonder if they were beckoning her home. But I am not a mystic, not even formally religious, and I figure if they are calling me, I hope they get a busy signal.
All the same, the dreams bother me in some way I cannot define. They are not terrible. I am competing in some strange game with friends and family, who are not defined by whether they are alive or dead. I keep trying to master the game, but always I fail. I wake up with some ominous feelings, which don’t fade quickly enough with the first glass of orange juice.
I don’t know why I am afraid of such innocuous dreams because the real world is much more terrifying. Unlike my parents and grandparents, who could get away from reality by immersing themselves in hard work, 21st-century American citizens are surrounded by the news, engulfed by it. Even at work, in the hallways and the cafeteria, the TV monitor is always on one of the 24-hour cable news networks. Carry a file to another office and you learn of more bloodshed in the Middle East or the latest disappearance of a woman outside a shopping mall. We live with fear and cannot tune it out – it is the terrible price we pay for technology.
Love does not insulate you from the fear; it accentuates it. The more I extend my circle of those with whom I cannot live without, the more fear I accommodate of unseen tumors or madmen lurking in the shadows. Perhaps, in living with and accommodating the fear, I invite the darkness into my dreams. A tradeoff: You let me work and love and I will give up restful sleep.
Our fear makes us more devout in the hope it will assuage. If we are devout, we must be good and goodness protects us from our fears. Our strange world has never been more devout and, at the same time, sheds more blood, causing more fear. You can tell me religion is a force for good, but because we are not divine, I view all religions as a guess; a flawed attempt to answer the question "why?" Don’t misunderstand. To argue religion is not always a force for good is not to argue it is intrinsically evil. But, like all human endeavors to understand the great mystery, it is understandably flawed. Those who say it is only a force for good will have to explain to me why so much misery and death is directly caused by religious belief. Religion promises protection from fear, but often becomes the source of it.
The terrorists who blow up a schoolhouse full of children do so in the name of religion, as does the person who kills a doctor because he performs legal abortions. Pope Pius X turned his back on Hitler’s slaughter of the Jews to protect his Church, as was the cover-up of the pedophilia scandals, for which the Church has profusely apologized. The Crusades, in all their cruelty, were waged in the name of religion. The Islamic fascists who want to destroy the West and what it sees as a profane culture does so because of their beliefs. Even the fashionable bigotry of our time – gay bashing – is done in the name of religion, just as the evils of slavery were justified in the 19th century. Those who use religion as a healing light seem, at times, vastly outnumbered by the armies of the night, who carry the same banner.
I heard a right-wing talk show host proclaim to a critical caller, "America is a force for good," as if implying we are beyond reproach, we are divine and not another flawed human institution. The president, when he is at his worst, says much the same thing. Because America does it, it must be right. Those that disagree God must always be on our side are dismissed as whining liberals. But what happens when the other side believes just as strongly God is with them?
When we invade a country and turn it upside down, we expect to be greeted as heroes. What is wrong with those Iraqis, who let the incessant killing and the lack of electricity and water blind them from seeing that we do this for their own good? Why won’t these tinhorn dictatorships like Iran and North Korea understand there is no hypocrisy in insisting on non-proliferation, while we build up our own nuclear stockpile? How can America scare anybody? Indeed, why can’t we see the possibility that the road to Hell is being paved with our good intentions?
To sleep, perchance to dream. To dream, perchance to fear.
