Seoul Hero

This is really getting out of hand. I have a recurring dream that I am visiting Toronto; I’d say this dream happens an average of once a month. Now, everyone who knows me knows that while I am no longer a Christian, I love a good (catholic) liturgy, and good church architecture. The next time I go back to Toronto, if I have enough time, the first thing I’m going to do is photoblog, in order, the interior of St. Mary’s on Adelaide and Bathurst, as well as St. Patrick’s on McCaul Street, St. George the Martyr south of College Street, St. Michael’s Cathedral on Bond and Shuter, “Smoky Tom’s,” otherwise known as St. Thomas’s Anglican church, tucked away behind Robarts library, and St. Basil’s on the east side of the University of Toronto campus.

Anyway, I have this recurring dream, and last night I dreamed it again. Now, each time I dream that I am looking for two churches that don’t actually exist in real Toronto. One is a magnificent Anglican Cathedral (perhaps a regret that I never saw the inside of St. Paul’s Anglican Cathedral, or St. James’), the other is a small jewel of a church with red carpet. Usually, the stained glass in the small church reminds me of the wonderful interior of St. George the Martyr, but this time it had plain, pale yellow stained glass (this can sometimes be used for good effect, but it wasn’t, this time).

Now, often in these dreams, I look for both of these churches, but I wake up before I can visit them. Or, I visit just one church, and can’t quite get to the other. This time–get this–knowing how I so often fail to get to these churches–a peculiar kind of dream consciousness–I was determined to go to them before my time ended. I was able to visit both, but, unfortunately, I was sorely disappointed. The little church gets worse every time I see it in my dreams. When I first dreamed about it, it was small and quaint. The next time it was condemned, and closed due to its being in bad shape. I never got to see it that time. The third time I succeeded in getting the minister from the modern church building adjacent to let me in, and he told me to be careful where I stepped, as some of the floor boards would collapse under the weight of a normal person. It was on that visit that the church ceased to be a charming little Anglican or Catholic church, and became a Protestant church. It got successively worse each time I was able to visit it.

Anyway, last night’s dream saw me visit again, and I got permission from the minister to enter, again. Again, he unlocked the church, now protected by a padlock key (!), and again I went in. For some reason, I couldn’t find a way into the sanctuary, as the interior of the church had a new wall in it. I went with a group of people, but I don’t think they had any relation to me. Anyway, an older middle aged man found a way into the sanctuary. I eventually joined him for just a few minutes, but I had horrific experiences before and after I did so. In the first place, the minister was no longer delightfully old and bookish; he was now actually a little creepy. When I got inside the church building, I found spiders everywhere, including hideous, massive ones, in jars, that were being raised deliberately. Some of these spiders were as big as my outstretched hand. Later, after visiting and photographing the sanctuary, I somehow ended beneath the floor, where I was set upon by an uncommonly strong child with a hunchback and a face rather like the antagonist of Child’s Play 2, which I had to watch in grade 7. I fended him off, but then he attacked another, much weaker child. I learned that these two children live underneath the floor in that church, which, as of last night, was now a Methodist Church. They disappeared in the tunnels under the floor, as I tried to make my escape. The only thing I could think was that I had to blog about these children so that the authorities could come and help both of them. The fact that the minister presided over this horror merely confirmed my suspicions of him from earlier in the day (in my dream, that is).

Well, I’m blogging the dream–well, nightmare–anyway. It was a relief to wake up.

I also made it to the big cathedral in my dream, too, although I actually went there first. It was a sore disappointment. It has a magnificent exterior that reminds me of St. Paul’s in London, but the inside had been totally redone to look like a converted gymnasium, and the worship style was now evangelical, probably a reminder of the country I live in, where the churches routinely commit aesthetic murder by gutting their historic interiors.

Tonight I shall try to eat a little less candy before I got to bed.