Author: Denise

(Sunday, July 14, 2013)  The first night at Kerkrade, Netherlands, at the Rolduc Abbey, I was awakened by marching feet, moving rhythmically down the long corridor. Each footstep rattled the double locks in the metal bedroom doors.

At the 2013 conference in Virginia Beach, I was awakened several times the second night by male revelers in the hall, shouting and slamming doors. I didn’t recognize the language they spoke. I was certain it was not European. For some reason I thought it was African. I later learned from John, our guide on the dolphin kayak trip, that if you paddle out too far into the ocean, the currents will take you to Africa.

The first night I slept peacefully and had a lovely dream of holding a newborn baby in my arms. I was both mother and child.

(Sunday, July 14, 2013)  The sweetest memory from the 2013 Dream Conference was when Bonnie and I went kayaking with the dolphins. The weather was perfect, the sea was gentle and warm. Our guide John told us we were traveling in a pod of about 250 Bottlenose Dolphins: newborn babies, bulls and cows. He told us that if we paddled without striking our oars on the side of the kayak that the pod would come to accept us.

It was true. They started swimming closer and closer, popping up from under the surface to give us one curious eye, then dipping back down beneath the waves. At times they were only five or so feet away from our kayak. John explained that the sea below us was full of dolphins and that we were seeing just a few of them above the water. I am still under their spell.

Our guide, a young Christian pastor, was quite the suitable companion for such a mystical experience. I had the sense, the whole time in Virginia, of being a player in a scene from the film “Brother Where Art Thou.” Everywhere we went folks were god blessing us and wishing us a “blessed day.”

(Sunday, July 14, 2013)  One of the events of the IASD Dream Conference is a guided nature walk. Bonnie, Peter, Pat and I joined the walk to the First Landing State Park, which is a cypress swamp a short distance from the convention hotel.

We all became lost, but Bonnie and Peter’s group realized that fact early on and headed back to the hotel. I was in a separate group of 13 people, including Pat, who did not figure it out till nearly sunset.

Someone in the troupe called the hotel and asked them to send us a shuttle. While this was being negotiated, however, a few others had flagged down a man in an SUV, with a fishing boat in tow, and talked him into taking them out of the woods. There was room for three people in the open boat. Two people were already seated and an extended discussion among The Lost ensued about who the third passenger should be. Finally, the impatient and surly driver stuck his head out of the window of his SUV and informed us he had places to go.

I was worried Pat would miss the opening reception for the art show, so I talked him into hopping into the boat. So away they all went, down the darkening road. Someone then wondered, sardonically, if we would later discover the three dumped in a ditch somewhere.

Finally the shuttle arrived, with Pat and his two boating companions already seated inside. Apparently the surly driver had only taken them to the end of the road, which was about a quarter mile away.