Holy Shit

I just realized that I dreamed about shit last night. Yikes, like dog shit and people shit all over the place and I was trying to clean it up. I remember in my dream using a hose and trying to spray it off of some surface and it wasn't working very well. I couldn't get the right angle. It seems like in the dream I was trying to get indoors where people were gathered- but I needed to clean it up first. It wasn't on me. I wasn't grossed out. I was just trying to get it done.

When I was in college, I wrote one of my two thesis papers on shit. I choose the word shit- rather than- feces, or poop explicitly because of the way it is shocking to one's senses. I wrote about how God's invitation is to be with us throughout our lives, but especially promises to be with us as we examine the "shit" that life hands us. God promises to be with us when we look at our pain, griefs, resentments and anger. Looking at our "shit" is very hard. Just like looking at our literal shit isn't something we tend to do. In fact, there is as pretty strong taboo against both forms. Yet, it is important to reveal something about our health and even make us healthier.

When we are able look at our "shit" God is present with us- and the promise in all of it is that in order to sort through it, it becomes fertilizer. It becomes a way to love ourselves, love others, and to really let God enter our lives, our hands- enter us. This is the hope of the Christian life: letting our shit become fertilizer for our own and others' growth.

So this is my fundamental theological or rather pastoral metaphor. In light of my dream it seems like something is playing out here. In my dream I was not grossed out, though the smell bothered me, and I was just trying to get through the task at hand and get on to the next thing . . . because, there seemed to be something else to follow. How, I wonder does this relate, for me, to the church-because my instinct tells me this dream is related to church stuff.

Any dream interpreters out there?