The Preachers on the Tower

(Inspired probably by @JRC and Bishop T.D. Jakes).  I dreamed I was on flat stone platform at the top of a low ziggurat, or later the stand in a church.  It was both in the dream.

With the stand with me were priests in black robes, or later preachers in 19th C. black.  They were both in the dream.

But whether seated in the congregation or standing in the square in front of the ziggurat, the audience was the same throughout.  Standard American.

It began with a young priest/preacher haranguing the crowd.

He says, “you fat girls think guys should be into you because you have a sweet spirit and a testimony.  What you don’t get is you are competing with girls who are thin and have a sweet spirit and a testimony.”  But now it seems there is a wider point he is making.  He is talking about how his audience assumes the rich must be unhappy or less genuine or something, or that the powerful must be callous or emotionally dead inside.  This is cope and consolation, he says.  (Listening, I  think, “sour grapes.”).  A number of rich people are just as happy and kind and attractive as you could wish, and so on.

Now he’s mocking.  The crowd doesn’t seem to mind.  “Did you think that with every pound you lose you lose one truth from your testimony?  Did you think that if you get a pay raise you would stop loving your dog?”

Then he sits down and another similar priest comes to the pulpit (there is now a pulpit) or maybe he steps back to grab a drink of water and to say a word to one of the men seated on the stand (there is now a stand) and then returns.  In the dream its both.

Now the preacher at the pulpit says, “but you are right to be afraid.  If you lose weight and become beautiful, how many of you will become vain or arrogant or sensual?  Or cruel?  If you became rich, how many of you would be embarrassed of where you came from?”

“The drive that pushes someone to become rich or powerful or beautiful often has to be strong enough that everything else inside gets warped.”

“The rich and the powerful and beautiful who are decent have passed through a gauntlet of temptations.”

He then sat down or got a sip of water and then Brigham Young got up or the preacher because Brigham Young.

His voice was strong.

“You are not in the Garden.  Do not be safe.  Run that gauntlet.”

That was the dream.