A most strange and beautiful dream on the eve of a most horrible morning

Last night I had a dream. 

Now, I know that sounds cliché, especially on a morning such as this where the world is waking up to the horrible event in Charleston, S.C.

It has been a long time since I have posted on anything outside my feature stories. But sometimes you have a dream so vivid which juxtaposes the events of reality so much I just had to write it down so I would not forget.

I was going to investigate some old house in Detroit that was said to have been part of the underground railroad.

It was a huge old tutor styled home with a wall around it, a circular driveway with ivy-covered landscape.

I knocked on the door and a very tall slender black woman in her 50s opened it to greet me. She had a dark purple dress on with flowers on it, very old-fashioned, as a dress taken from the 1940’s. Her hair was in corn rows and then coiled into a neat bun. She wore wired spectacles. She welcomed me in with a warm smile.

I told her I wanted to learn about this house’s history with the Underground Railroad.

She said she would give me a tour of the house, but first, invited me in for Shabbat lunch.

Told you this was a strange dream. 

The house was a series of elaborately decorated rooms, all in the Victorian style. Think flowered wallpaper and intricately carved crown molding along the ceiling.

Each room was filled with people, black and white, seated around huge dining tables eating cholent (a thick stew served on Saturday afternoons) served in large silver tureens and studying Hebrew.

It was not clear if all those there were all Jewish, but they were all studying, singing, laughing and eating in complete harmony.

After a while, I approached the woman to tour the house again.

She led me up a broad staircase, and then a narrow one up to the attic.

We climbed up another ladder, and there, in a loft, were bunk beds where slaves would hide for a few nights or days on their journey to freedom to Canada. It was quite hot and the air stuffy in the attic and I imagined those who hid in that attic and how uncomfortable they must have been, hiding for their lives on their way to freedom.

I woke up this morning only to learn that a white man shot and killed nine worshippers at the Emanuel A.M.E. church, a church described by the Washington Post as a “site of struggle, resistance and change” for the past two hundred years.

The murderer sat there for an hour among his victims before he opened fire. What was going through his head in that hour? How could he not have a change of heart as he sat and listened to people studying the Bible?