[Prolusion]
I had a dream last night. While the dream is short and looks nerdy, that trait is only superficial. Members of the congregation would be wise to listen to my recount of this dream, regardless of its nerdy content.
[The Dream]
My step-brother (who, for those who don’t know him, is one of the loudest, most redneck, technically inept people that ever existed on this planet) recently came into a lot of money (in my dream). He found himself a brand new, very expensive apartment, and bought himself all new furniture. He paid an interior decorator to hang all sorts of art on the walls, regardless of the fact that he didn’t understand any of it. He purchased a huge pile of home theater equipment: several amplifiers, a receiver, a DVD player, a CD player, a HI-FI VCR, several gaming consoles, a huge Wide Screen digital TV, a satellite receiver, speakers for two rooms, and a mutli-room coordinator to make the second set work. It was a home theater enthusiasts dream come true.
He was having trouble getting it all hooked up properly and called me up to help him. When I got there, lying under a self-hung poster of “The Rock” which was nestled in between two contemporary paintings that shared “skulls” as a common theme, was a huge pile of electronic equipment, wires, connectors, broken Styrofoam and empty boxes. I was eager to get started and dug right in.
After taking inventory of all the parts, each of their connectors, and all of the cables we had, I realized there was a problem. None of the components had the proper cables and converters to hook into the parts they needed to. For instance, the TV had an optical out which was of a proprietary connector type, while the receiver only had spots for digital coax inputs. I wont bore you with the details of each and every component. It is suffice to say that, while some pieces could be connected to other pieces in a working fashion, with what we had, there was no way to get all the parts connected so that everything worked at the same time.
After about two hours of pondering, I gave up and went home.
When I woke up, but was still partially asleep, I realized something. There was a way. It was unconventional, not really regarded as proper, but it worked without any degradation of quality. It involved using connectors on the back of his speakers (I know… it isn’t plausible… just bear with me) to convert the signals from one format to another. I fell back asleep and found myself in the elevator going down from his high-rise apartment. I turned around and went right back up.
After about an hour worth of work, everything was operating perfectly. When I left, he was happily watching “SummerSlam 2000″ on DVD while sitting on his custom designed row of theater seats, and eating popcorn from the built-in popcorn maker.
[Conclusion]
I believe in the prophetic value of dreams. Not every dream, but many of them. Each aspect of the dream symbolizes something. While the superficial content of the dream is generally based on something that happened to us that day, the symbolism, if we can see it, generally speaks to something much deeper.
In this dream, the components represent the various aspects of life. And not necessarily the same life. Perhaps two or three different lives with the desire to be connected as one working machine serving a common goal. Sometimes those pieces go together easily. Without any effort at all some of the parts are connected, and working properly. However, without all the parts connected, the goal is not met, and the owner is not satisfied. All too often we are ready to give up, when really, we just need to step back and look at things from a different perspective. Not always, but sometimes, this allows us to see a different way of doing things, however unconventional, and saves us from having to throw everything away.
In the case of my dream, it was too late. I had given up, and I went home. I was lucky to have that second chance as, oftentimes, we don’t realize what the problem was until it is far too late to do anything about it.
I’m not claiming that the home theater system wont blow up in a few weeks due to the unconventional method we used to connect it. But, at least this way, it has the possibility of making it.
