I'm at First Church in downtown Seattle although it looks more massive on the inside than I know it to be. It's maybe three or four stories to the ceiling in this, the narthex. I think I was in the sanctuary a moment ago and have just walked out the back. As I do, I check out a door to the sanctuary but, because of the architecture and how far back the door is, you open it and walk through a dark hall a ways before you actually get to the sanctuary. I don't go in, though. I keep walking around the back. I may even backtrack a little to another door that's tall, inset with glass panels that I can look through into a great open space with stairs running around the walls and continuing upward beyond my sight. I think to myself that this is the stairwell to the attached apartment building. I try the door and to my surprise find it unlocked. Pulling it open I walk into the church's massive library. Inside I can hear the pipe organ playing through the walls from the sanctuary, a simple tune. There's no one here in this massive space except along the wall farthest from me I can see a kind of office space in the open and floor to ceiling bookshelves behind that. I see Kimmer perusing the shelves in this part of the library that doesn't receive as much daylight. Most of the light is pooled in the center of the library, dropping off toward the walls. First, though, I see our old youth pastor, Wally, back there in front and to the right of the office space. He wears his full pastor robes, the black ones with the purple stole around the neck that drapes halfway down his body. He and Kimmer are engaged in conversation as he walks toward me with a giant bowl or large cup of blueberry tea or blueberry cocoa that I begin to drink immediately because it's delicious. Then it's hugs all around. It's time to go. And now I'm walking down a hill outside that's like the one outside my childhood home, 32nd. It feels like that more than it looks like that. It feels like I'm walking about halfway down the block with houses on my left and the street to my right. I realize that we're here for Christmas but that we managed to miss the actual Christmas Eve service which I can't imagine how we did that. We're definitely dressed up for Christmas Eve although it's perfectly daylight outside right now. And I'm wondering what other Christmas traditions we may have missed.
I also realize that we're in Canada, a ferry ride across the strait to the Washington peninsula. That would put us on Vancouver Island... only we're not on Vancouver Island. Somehow we're on mainland Canada. Now I'm walking through an RV or a mobile office with a lot of mechanical parts inside. This is a obviously a working workshop. I understand this to be the headquarters of an old army guy whose job it is to record the sounds of different guns being fired. Not handguns, though. Not rifles or machine guns, though. But like on a tank. Or on a ship. BIG guns. Cannons of the modern age. I'm outside the building now, standing at the back of an army truck looking down at a piece of the bumper laying on the ground. The old army guy is explaining to me how that's a very difficult piece of the truck and then walks away. I lean down to pick up the piece and realize the bumper's still there and that what's lying on the ground is a metal something or other that attaches to the inside of the bumper. I then try to see for myself how it fits by laying down on the ground on my back. It actually only runs from the right rear of the truck to the center. It has a couple screws that slip into slots back there. It also has a kind of hose that I have to muscle into a spot in the back rear corner where I can screw it into place by hand. The screw is a black plastic piece set around the metal end of the hose like a collar with ridges. The screw screws right in and then I'm standing up again realizing in that moment that this is the truck we're driving back home to Washington State across the strait. I catch sight of a map that shows our route that goes across the strait and down the peninsula about halfway before turning East towards the Sound and then across the Sound to home. We're sitting in the cab right now parked in line for the ferry amidst rows and rows and rows of cars and trucks doing our best impersonation of a huge parking lot. Now I'm standing at the corner of an awkward busy intersection where I've got to cross the street in front of me but I also have to cross another one right after that that intersects with the first one at an angle. Thinking I have a green walk sign, I begin crossing the street with whatever I'm holding in my arms.... only there's still traffic coming at me although it's coming at me slowly. It's coming slowly enough that I'm able to cross both streets, no problem.
Then I wake up.
