Cemetary Oprah

Last night I dreamt that Oprah was running a large project out of the cemetary of the church my family and I went to growing up.

I've had many dreams about things taking place in out church cemetary. I think what that particular cemetary represents is a place that most people find scary, but that we, or maybe I should say "I," because I'm not sure what the other kids at my church felt about it, but for me, our church cemetary was a place to run free - at church festivals, it was the place where us kids could go and do as we pleased while the adults hung out either in the beer tent - mostly the men; and while the women stayed in the church basement getting everything cleaned up from the money-raising meal they had just served. It was a little more egalitarian than that - there were men who'd help clean up, and had been outside cooking the meat, but witnessing it from a kid's perspective, the lines were drawn there.

For us kids, we had worked our part of the picnic, and were set free after our work was done and while the adults were all either cleaning up or having fun of their own. I don't recall having a specific adult assigned to watch over us; we just were allowed to play unsupervised. However, there were certain rules: we couldn't run by the beer tent or we'd get yelled at. We had to have decorum in the basement, where our paying guests were. So the cemetary. The cemetary meant freedom, play, and privacy from scrutinizing eyes and scolding mouths. It meant sharing the toys we had won at the "fishing pond" game. It meant joy. It meant fun. It meant confident abandon.

So, I'm in the lower end of our church cemetary. I'm feeling very lazy, like I'm just sitting around waiting for the go ahead on some project, and I'm not trying to make myself useful in other capacities in the mean time - I'm just waiting for this project to begin. Oprah is at a desk set up about 50 feet in from the road, at the bottom corner of the cemetary. It seems we are creating a large project; I somehow knew it was time to report for duty, and in the dream I had to go in through a door to get to Oprah's outdoor, make shift office there in the cemetary. I felt so lazy when I saw Oprah working; she wasn't frantically getting her stuff done, but she was consistently getting her stuff done. I, on the other hand, knew I was very hit or miss with completing goals. Oprah seemed to know this about me, and yet somehow we both knew that she didn't have an option to have me work on this project or not to work on this project - I was simply assigned this project and I'd have to learn how to work better myself. Oprah seemed to know that it wasn't her problem to try to tell me I need to be more effecient and consistent. It was my problem to become more efficient and consistent.

The project feels like one of those "We Are The World" type deals; she has Jennifer Anniston and two other current celebreties working on this project with her. It seems each of these celebrities is matched up with a mentor of sorts, it seems they are each paired up with their own talk show host who is of the same strength and caliber as Oprah. I don't know who these other talk show hosts are, and I can't remember the other celebrities. I see what looks like a two-page spread in a magazine with at least 30 female celebrities standing together - equally separated, each was standing out on their own, but the feeling of the spread was that together they were something different, something more than they were individually yet their individual difference were necessary for the whole of the project. It seems the photo was taken in our church cemetary, but toward the eastern end of the cemetary, at the top of the rise; the church sits at the top of a hill, and the cemetary kind of falls off on the sloping hill on the west side of the church. I'm wondering if different areas of the cemetary mean different things - that bottom corner where Oprah's office was was very quiet and undisturubed - nobody hung out there, for some reason. And the area between the church and where the cemetary began; it's like it was a void, or maybe it was a void because energetically speaking it was the line between the church and the cemetary, so we just knew it was too close to the church to be appropriate to play there. Like, you had to go back to being more reverential to be there.

The overall feeling I got was that I was assigned this project - Oprah knew it and I knew it - and we were both uneasy about me completing my part of it. However, at the same time, we both knew that it was for me to do - she couldn't manage me, or run me, or make me do my job. My lazy and laxidaizical attitude was for me and me alone to change. Like that was part of my growth; her only concern was doing her best, and the project would turn out as it was supposed to. A sort of Let Go and Let God project management philosophy and execution strategy.

That's all for today. Feels like a pretty good dream.