Consider this pearl of wisdom from Topher Grace: "It is always smart that smart men salute smartly."

The fact that he said this in my dreams this morning notwithstanding, I'm thinking of taking his advice to heart. Perhaps I will salute people smartly all day today, and thereby profit by it in a way that is currently unknown to me. He seemed to think it was sound advice, and gave it so solemnly that I fear to ignore it.

I don't take much stock in the idea of dreams being laden with meaning, carrying vital information that my subconscious brain is desperately trying to communicate to my conscious mind. I realize that God has used dreams to speak to people, such as He did with Nebuchadnezzar, but if God has been saying anything to me through them, it would be something along the lines of "Go put on a costume and roleplay!" As much as I'd like to think that He's telling me that, in my waking hours my conscience tells me something much different. I think that I'm far better off using reason and conscience to guide my life.

Marilyn tells me she's jealous of my dreams. I guess I can appreciate that, as they are pretty cool most of the time. I've had dreams over the past months in which I've been in elaborate live-action roleplaying games, playing everyone from Frodo traveling to Mount Doom to King Arthur's most favored knight, training the Knights of the Round Table in Roman military maneuvers while wearing gold-plated 15th century armor (which, by the way, looks pretty impressive when you're accompanied by 30-50 others wearing the same armor, even if you are all on foot). I also have superhero dreams, where I have super-strength and the ability to fly as if I had jet rockets in my feet. In this morning's dream, I was playing a knight character, having just dressed in my armor and going to a diplomatic parley of some kind...and I happened to be Topher Grace, who was thoughtfully providing the voice-over narrative.

Even the occasional nightmares strike me as good stories as I journey through them; though, upon waking, they're often revealed as derivative or goofy. Having said that, I plan to someday make a mini-comic of one of my nightmares, titled "Bite." It's an odd little story, and I'm curious as to whether I could pull off in graphic format the same sense of surreal tension I experienced in the dream, but I figured that a story is a story, and it's best not to look a gift horse in the mouth (aside from checking to make sure someone else hasn't already written the story).

I've never had a prophetic dream that I can remember, though. The most striking, realistic, otherworldly dream I've ever had was only wish-fulfilment (kissing Keri Hostetler) and didn't come to pass in real life. I am willing to accept that people have had and do have prophetic dreams, but I also must conclude that some dream-advice is not so beneficial, and doesn't necessarily come from a trustworthy source (one friend's recently-stated conclusions come to mind). How does one tell the difference? Obviously there's the test of Scripture; as Paul said in his letter to the Galatians, "But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed." But say that the dream doesn't conflict with previous revelations. How does one know how to proceed? Should the dreamer seek out an interpreter - someone to act as his Daniel - or should he look up the material in one of those books on dream interpretation that are out there? I would honestly have no idea how to move forward in that case, skeptic that I apparently am.

Not that I'm complaining about the current state of my dreams. I'm quite happy to continue experiencing escapism on an epic scale, even if bits and pieces of it turn out to be rather silly upon awakening reflection.