An odd dream

car-repair-shopDo some of you find that dreams which come just before rising have a … different quality?  This morning I had a particularly vivid dream which is still stuck in my head.  Often dreams fade.  Not this one.

Here are the bare bones.

I was in a garage, a car repair and body shop, run by a bunch of Hispanic guys and gals lead by a fellow named Hector.  The shop was a business but it was also a kind of half-way house (I’m not sure that’s the right term, since it has negative connotations) for pregnant young women and others in various phases of trouble.  They could live for free over the garage, but they had to work in the repair shop and also participate in physical-condition-appropriate daily PT.  They learned to repair cars and each one had a project of working also on a particular needy car during their stay.  When it was time to leave, they had a job skill and they could keep the car they had “rescued”.  I was there to say a daily TLM in their chapel, off the back of the garage where they also had the Blessed Sacrament reserved.  A cadre of women from the neighborhood provided both pot luck meals and day care.

Anyway, it was vivid enough that I felt compelled to write it down.  I have no idea where this one came from.  I’m rather susceptible to dreaming about the last thing that I might have watched on TV (movie, etc.) or read. As I get older I find that I have to be pretty careful about what I watch before turning in, because that’s what I’ll dream later on.  That can be bad, particularly when it involves lots of combat, etc.  In any event, this one came seemingly out of nowhere, nothing I was involved with during the day.

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21 Comments

  1. chantgirl says:

    Pregnant here- I’m chuckling to myself over the image of pregnant women working on cars. During previous 3rd trimesters I have often mused that there should be a Special Olympics for pregnant women. They could compete in such categories as tying their own shoes fastest, shaving in the shower without injury, sprinting to the bathroom etc.

    In my own nightmare last night, I entered the confessional at church finding not a confessional, but a dreaded “reconciliation room” filled with people drinking coffee. I was already uncomfortable with the idea of confessing in front of everyone when I noticed that the “priest” was actually a woman wearing a cassock. I said to her ” I don’t mean to be offensive, but are you sure you’re a priest- I mean, are you sure you’re a man?” She tried to give me absolution and I ran out of the confessional screaming to find a real priest.

    Pregnancy dreams, lol.

    [In the full light of day, I’m not entirely convinced that an auto body shop, with the various fumes and toxic substances, is the very best place for women in that condition, but… that was the dream.]

  2. Sandy says:

    Oh Father, I feel compelled to encourage you to keep praying about this dream. When a dream is vivid and remains with me and replays over and over, I know it is a dream the Lord sends. I have had experiences that prove this to be true. Your dream sounds prophetic, especially for these times and Heaven knows what is coming, when we will all have to help each other. God bless and strengthen you and all of us.

  3. Sandy says:

    Can’t edit, so permit me to add, that these dreams are often symbolic.

  4. chantgirl says:

    Yes, Fr. Z, replace the auto shop with sewing vestments training, or bicycle repair, or learning to code and I think you have a winner.

    Think about that- vestments sewn by vulnerable pregnant women. What a pro-life witness for the Church!

    [Except that in the dream model, the women at least get a car they’ve rebuilt. They can’t wear vestments. Learning to code… there’s a thought.]

  5. Absit invidia says:

    Could be a glimpse of the Church Militant and salvation/afterlife – where we wounded creatures, through sin, must toil and tarry on this earth and cooperate with Gods grace. When we leave this world God blesses our efforts and utilizes the skills we cooperated with Him in acquiring to continue serving God in the afterlife.
    That’s what I see anyway.
    What movie did you watch?

    [I didn’t. I finished a 17th century Japanese murder mystery earlier in the evening. Not much to connect.]

  6. Huber says:

    One has to wonder what the cars represent to the unconscious mind. A motor? (Very Ayn Rand..) Perhaps woman, in her fallen nature working on repairing the motor of the Church with new generations of faithful Catholics? Guided by faithful priests who administer the sacraments? Getting to keep the car – perhaps maintenance (nurturing) of a domestic church.

    [Interpretation of my dream… could become amusing.]

  7. PA mom says:

    Sounds like an amazing inspiration for a ministry!

  8. Polycarpio says:

    Sounds like Homeboy Industries, Extraordinary Form Edition.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeboy_Industries

    [It does indeed!]

  9. WGS says:

    Reverend Father,
    Perhaps you have been taking a statin, in particular atorvastatin (Lipitor)? [First, not your business. Second, no. Third, not your business.]

    There is anecdotal evidence of its producing “Lippy dreams”. These are not necessarily nightmares, but just fantastic realistic dreams.

  10. In his textbook on psychology, Fr. Ripperger says that dreams are basically the brain’s way of taking out the intellectual garbage. Since he is doing psychology from a Catholic perspective, he of course does not rule out divinely-inspired dreams such as those recounted in Scripture. Still, since most dreams are probably not divinely inspired, I actually find his metaphor rather comforting.

  11. Elizabeth M says:

    I often wonder what the Church says about dreams like this. Are we allowed to interpret to a degree and then laugh it off? At what point can we say it was Divinely inspired? Twice I’ve had dreams about St. Pio speaking to me about thing I was worried about but I figured it was only my own mind trying to make sense of the situation.

    I like the previous post idea about women who carrying the next generation, are working on the church which is broken down and because women have helped lead to this downfall, we have to work harder to restore that which we squandered.

    Or maybe you had a crazy dream about Fast & Furious, Catholic edition.

  12. THREEHEARTS says:

    There is a surprising “statement” by the Church for dreams that come in the waking hours before dawn. It seems she counts them as not of our making. Perhaps Father can find the appropriate Church Statement. It is Very old. I have mislaid my copy.

  13. benedetta says:

    Really interesting!

  14. Ave Crux says:

    Father, this sounds too coherent to have been simply a dream, which often can be just disjointed snippets in sequence, rather than a logical scenario depicting a very rationale portrayal of a marvelous ministry.

    I would suggest placing your written account at the feet of Our Lady’s statue, asking Her to enlighten you if the dream was intended by God to suggest a ministry of some kind, or to consign it to oblivion in your memory if such is not the Will of God for you.

  15. comedyeye says:

    From my own experience, these ultra vivid dreams are tied in to other things happening in your life.
    I can interpret mine within the context of my own life. I think it would be near impossible to do the same for someone else whose life specifics I am not familiar with.

  16. PA mom says:

    I was reading this morning about the London terrorist, who, it seems, was brought into Islam while older and in prison. So many men are being lost this way.

    I wonder when the last time that a group of men in prison in this country were offered an TLM? Maybe there is already a group who does this?

  17. un-ionized says:

    PA mom, around here, Kairos does good work with good results as it continues after release.

    Valium gives me wacky dreams. Not scary just wacky.

  18. slainewe says:

    Cars are symbols of independence. They are what take us away from our homes. Here we have mothers-to-be, not learning the skills of motherhood (cooking and child care), but working on what will take them away from it – driving to an outside job with the skills to slave for mammon.

    Perhaps the garage represents the condition of women in the present Church under the miter of Pope Francis (who comes from an Hispanic ministry in Argentina). Hector means “bully.” And women today are definitely being “bullied” to abandon the Family; actively by husbands who expect them to work for mammon, and passively by clergy who side with feminist ideology. The garage feeds their minds (with skills) and bodies (with PT), but the Lord is not here.

    OUTSIDE the garage is where the Lord choses to dwell – in the attached chapel near the neighborhood filled with women still caring for the Family, who, ironically, are enabling women in the garage to shirk their motherhood. This is, in fact, often the case when Catholic grandmothers provide family care for their daughters so they can pursue mammon, which is a sad disservice to them because women work out their salvation by caring for the Family.

  19. The Cobbler says:

    Clearly you’ve been listening to Pope Francis. After all, doesn’t he keep saying that the Church is a field hospital repair shop? Hagan lio?

    In all seriousness, though, this sounds an awful lot like something one of my friends wants to put together someday, only with auto mechanics instead of household management.

  20. Elizabeth D says:

    Father, even if I am not the most promising person, I would love to help run the daily TLM Catholic home/workshop for women in trouble. There should be a core group of consecrated women so I will be one of them (if we are talking dreams, then I am going to dream of there being some form of consecrated life that I am not rejected for, that’s what I really utterly want in life, I have no interest whatsoever in a car or learning to drive). Count me in on the planning meetings! I hope the shop is something over than cars!

    The likelihood is that you will do it and there will be consecrated women and I will be rejected for being one of them, because my vocation is to get rejected from every vocation and then think of new vocations and get rejected from those and even from my actual vocation that I actually have. Your next-door neighbor knows!

  21. Elizabeth D says:

    The reason why that is my vocation (getting rejected) is because Jesus suffered rejection and humiliation and many other things on account of my sins, very lovingly, so I have to learn to suffer everything very lovingly to be united to Him.

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