Last night I dreamed. I dreamed one of the most vivid and disturbing dreams I've had in a while. It provoked my thoughts and challenged my perceptions on issues that before I had ignored. It felt like a surreal glimpse of the future; though a disgusting and repulsive one.
It began, or at least, the earliest part I remember of it was on a beach. It was like a documentary, with a voice commenting on each part as I perceived what was around me. The sky was brown and dark, like smoke from an unhealthy fire. The commentary began by saying the island was Papa New Guinea, which it could've been, I have never been there. All I knew was what I could feel, the beach felt desperate, hopeless and sinister. A caucasian middle-aged woman in a bikini lay in the ankle deep water as the commentary said rich men came to the island for 'pursuits'. I then began to see dead fish, of every colourful variety washing up dead upon the shore next to the woman. I scooped a small one up in a net and looked at it. The woman seemed oblivious to the fact that there was dead fish floating all around her. Her stare remained vacant and soulless. I turned to my left and there was a large blue whale washed up on the sand wall of the erroded beach line. When I saw it a pungent and invading stench filled my nostrils. I attempted to get away from it by heading away from the beach, but the stench changed to one of rotting begetables and became even more intense.
I saw a wall of dirt with houses built out of rotting wood and plants off of it. The people in the houses were whaling so loud it was deafening. There were people, a few of them children, climbing up the wall using pieces of concrete protruding out of it. They were all holding pieces of rotten vegetables. In a moment, I was in a white sterile room with rows of computers. Children sat at the computers with booklets. The voice once again spoke saying that the kids were learning how to distinguish ingenuine refugees. I felt disgusted at the sight of the children's education. Then, in a moment I was back with the hopeless people climbing the wall where the feeling of despair had grown. I saw a boy high on the wall holding a rotted tomato in his hand. The voice spoke up once again saying, 'the only way to save this generation is to replant'. The boy seemed to look back at me then drove tomato into the dirt wall. As he did I became the tomato and was plunged into the wall. It went silent and black. The smell had dissipated, and I felt secure and safe, far from the whaling and despair of the outside world.
At that point I awoke, shaken and convicted. I'm no greeny; I don't feel the need to protest about anything, I don't become enraged at the suffering of animals and I don't pay attention to deforestation. However, this dream painted a picture so incredibly vivid that it has made me reconsider my sensetivity to these issues. I don't want to live in a world so polluted and sick that all that is beautiful about it is killed. I live in a beautiful part of the world and the image of all of that being desecrated felt wrong and sickening to look at. Until you see death of the world up close, it is so easy to ignore it. I believe God loves His creation, not just us, and it is up to us to steward it.
There was a deeper message amongst all of this I believe. It's hard to completely discern, but I am going to attempt to do so. There seemed to be a running theme of abuse and neglect. The woman on the beach, the children in the white room and the child on the wall all point to it. I'm not a politically aware person; I don't have my finger on the pulse of politics and I very rarely trust anyone trying to coerce me. However, I don't want to live in a country where the fear of losing money, property or a particular lifestyle is put in front of human compassion. I didn't have a say on refugees before, but I have had a change of heart. I don't want my children asking me why the people who have lost everything don't belong in this country. I don't want them seeing boats of people and exclaiming, 'We don't want them here!' People are people, deserving the same amount love, respect and humanity we all do. I was apathetic before, but now I see why people are so passionate about this.
The child driving that rotten tomato into the dirt also really resonated with me. I kept going over and over that image in my mind the following day trying to figure out what it was that had struck me. I came to the conclusion that why it resonated was because the tomato was rotten. It was long dead, but there was still hope. Even after it's potential had long past, if it was to be sown with the same belief that that child had, new life was possible. Perhaps, not for him, but for the next generation.
