Axel's dream

 Axel’s dream 

“To me this is like the days of Noah,
    when I swore that the waters of Noah would never again cover the earth.
So now I have sworn not to be angry with you,
    never to rebuke you again.
Though the mountains be shaken
    and the hills be removed,
yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken
    nor my covenant of peace be removed,”
    says the Lord, who has compassion on you.         — Isaiah 54:9-10

Axel is telling me about two friends from his seminary class who remained friends “ever after” they met first year and even became brothers-in-law when the one’s daughter married the other’s son. The one was a big man, slow and calm, the other an waspish Rumpelstiltskin. D and R he calls them. Then he is telling me about their wives as well because they had to become friends, too, whether they wanted to or not: D’s tall and plain and beautiful nonetheless and R’s small and round with a flat, blonde, unblinking doll’s face, eyes painted a fierce blue. Axel said, “I know I am only telling you what they looked like, but they were what they looked like.” All of this he is telling me by way of introduction to a dream he thought I might be interested in.
     My first thought is contrary: How interested is any of us in anyone else’s dream? But then I thought: Maybe I am interested, a little, if only because I have never thought of Axel as one that has dreams.

Read Rumpelstiltskin’s true story here.

Axel says: I am flying from one place I never wanted to be to a destination I’m not certain of, and I am lost in this massive, labyrinthine airport until I stumble my way into one of those bus-station-like corners where the bus-sized planes fly from the city to smaller towns around. I’ve taken off my glasses so I won’t recognize anyone if there might be anyone in that drab grade-school-lunch-smelling room that I might recognize. But I can’t not recognize D, who even if I can’t see him is wearing that overconfident Christian armor he has over the years (sadly, unfortunately) taken piece by piece from R until almost all of D’s natural, big-man’s modesty has been squeezed out and R’s small-man’s over-compensatory self-confidence substituted until it is brimming over, smelling of engine oil. I say self-confidence (bustling, bristling), for it is not God that is R’s refuge and strength as he would have you believe. No, it is the other way around: R is God’s refuge and strength.
     When I put on my glasses and embarrassedly introduce myself, D doesn’t seem to recognize me. But it is only for the moment — D is too kind naturally — he cannot be completely taken over by his brother-in-law’s mean spirit. I mean “mean” more in the sense of little and shrunken than nasty or spiteful, though there are times one must be nasty if God, who is much too kind, too open, too forgiving in Jesus Christ — one must be nasty if such a God is to be protected. But D is not thinking how he must defend the faith against me but wondering WWJD, and he blinks and says, “Oh, hi.” And he asks where I am going.
     But I don’t know. I’ll need to check my ticket if I can find it. I begin patting my pockets from coat to shirt to pants, and I wake up.

“I didn't know you wore glasses,” I say.
     “I don’t.”
     “Oh,” I say and after a pause, “What happened with the daughter and the son?”
     “I don’t know,” Axel says. “It was a dream — I said that, didn’t I?”
     I nod. “But the daughter and the son were real, right?” I want to add. But I don’t.

                                                                       01.18.23