A Pugilistic Priest

Normally I find dreams tiresome, and among my own I prefer the action-adventure ones where I run away from tidal waves or volcanic eruptions, so I am just posting this one because of its compellingness:

In my dream last night, I was a priest standing at the podium, on the stage of a darkened auditorium. I addressed the people in words I don't remember. But then a group of men came up onto the stage, and the foremost one showed a chart of numbers and signs that I had scribbled on my arm with a pen, and shouted that I was involved in something occult. I calmly explained that they were the numbers of the divisions, or rather troops, in the French army during the Revolution, and that the second two columns of the chart recorded the casualties. The accuser wasn't convinced, and he then persisted in poking his handgun into my back. I trembled a little, and he laughed and said that this was odd considering what I had preached about not being afraid of death and what lies beyond it. So I pulled myself together and patiently repeated my explanation. The other person sneered again, and then I decided to put an end to his threats by punching him in the eye. It instantly bruised. He kept on, so I punched him again and gave him another black eye, though internally worrying that this wasn't in keeping with my clerical position. Then he fell and looked quite seriously injured.

The setting had changed into the "little house" back at our home in Victoria, so I lifted the motionless body, nudged open the screen door with my foot, and carried him down to the "big house" for medical attention. A soldier was at the door and another was patrolling the verandah. They assumed that I was up to something violent, they shot me, and I died. But my perspective immediately changed into that of the priest's disembodied spirit, and I was outside the window as an autopsy was done, only seeing the tray with bits of the priest's internal organs on it, and not my body or even the forensics experts themselves. It turned out that I had taken up a manipulated handgun, placed within reach by the "bad" person, and that in using it I had somehow poisoned myself anyway.

Anyway, in dissecting the dream, I see that I dreamt of the chart because of the charts in the kanji book that T. bought yesterday, the French Revolution aspect was suggested because of the research I've done on it for my story, and the autopsy scene could come out of any of the crime shows that I used to watch fairly often. What interested me about this dream was the oddity of having a priest in his fifties or older as my dream-avatar, the seriousness and the detail, and because it seemed unusually intelligent (not my forté!) and meaningful. The evident lesson is that I shouldn't turn to anger and violence to resolve a conflict, and that vengeance does not improve anything and easily recoils on the one who indulges in it. (The manipulated handgun incident is, in hindsight, a glaringly obvious metaphor.) Of course these are not remotely novel thoughts; but, not having a choleric temperament, I've rarely been in the situation where such considerations were relevant.