Time-Traveling Family

“To know the road ahead, ask those coming back” - Chinese Proverb

Last night I had a dream in which Mom and Dad decided that we ought to relive the last 15 years of our lives. They drove me up and down old, dusty roads from Canada and the U.S. over and over again as we talked about their plans to go down the metaphorical roads of the past. They had yet to pick up Aaron and Jesse over the course of the dream, possibly because I was still so unconvinced that this was a good plan.

I no longer remember every detail of their argument for this family plan, only that they thought that too many mistakes had been made and that we could correct them by living those years again.

I wondered how they would explain their adult-sized, de-Christianized 11, 8 and 6 year-olds if we did somehow manage to slip back all of those years. Not to mention a few in-laws and a grandson that have since wiggled into the family tree.  I wondered how an Agnostic pastor would preach. I imagine him saying, "I don't care about arguing about the existence of God or about separating us into those who do or do not Believe (tm).  What I do care about is how well we treat one another."

As we were driving, Dad spotted a few old fellow pastors by the side of the road somewhere in Ontario. He stopped to say hello. They invited him to a spiritual revival that was erupting at the Vineyard church in Toronto. I thought for sure he would say yes, but he smiled and said that he was too busy with his family at the moment. 

And then I woke up. At which point I considered how we would react to seeing a few old friends alive and well again if it was possible to return to 1994. Would speaking to them be an act of joy, or would it be too eerie to know when and how they will (or did?) die? Especially when embracing those whose deaths were not the result of a a long illness or old age. And then I thought: If one reconnects with someone who was dead, but  who now lives, is their death something that happened in the past or something that will occur in the future, grammatically speaking?

(Hopefully the photo posts ok. I found it here.)