Dreams and Visions

An ‘impossible’ dream—for an atheist

by David Catchpoole

By the third time that I’d had this dream (in my early twenties), the details were very firmly etched in my mind. It was always the same. In the dream I was walking on a hot day along a dusty rough vehicular track, dodging the muddy potholes—evidence of past rain (I guessed), though not for a while it seemed, as the sides of the potholes had dried out and caked hard. The air smelt of a curious mixture of dry dust and drying mud.

Apart from the bare wheel ruts, the track was overgrown with weedy plants, many of which were in flower—their fragrance along with the smell of mud and airborne dust was unforgettably distinctive. It was obviously a rural area, as to my left and right, i.e. on the other side of each of the barbed wire fences lining the road, cattle—a beautiful chestnut-coloured type, with white legs, which I’d never seen before—were grazing. The air was so still and quiet in the midday heat that I could very clearly hear the cattle crunching on the stubble they were grazing.

At that exact moment, a cloud suddenly provided me with some welcome shady respite from the fierce heat of the midday sun directly overhead. At this point in the dream, I remember noting:
the sun was indeed directly overhead—something I’d never seen before, having spent all my life (up to that point) at southern latitudes (I grew up in Adelaide, South Australia, which is where I had this recurring dream)
the cloud was obviously very small and the only cloud in the sky, because the land just a short distance away from me (in all directions) was still bathed in sunlight, including in front of me just off to my left a cluster of small greyish white concrete buildings constructed in a style I’d never seen before.

While I was absorbing all this, the silence was suddenly broken by the sound of a chainsaw, coming from a distant stand of trees off to my right.

After all (I reasoned at the time), we’re just a collection of chemicals.

It was always at this point in the dream that I woke up to find it was morning, in Adelaide, and time for me to go off to school/university. Given that I was an atheist at the time, I simply dismissed the recurring ‘dream’ as an involuntary product of my brain doing whatever it is that brains do to process and file away information picked up from what our eyes, ears, etc., saw, heard or read during our waking hours. After all (I reasoned at the time), we’re just a collection of chemicals, and our brain is really just a bunch of chemical reactions—so our sleep is an opportunity for the body to reorganize/reverse the brain’s chemical reactions ready for a new day—akin to recharging batteries overnight.

Or so I thought—back then.

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