Seeing Bob Dylan––A Dream within a Dream

The night before my husband and I went to see Bob Dylan, I dreamed I met him. It had not occurred to me that I would ever get to see Dylan in person––the opportunity, the tickets, the timing––this desire had never registered on my life’s continuous imaginary movie screen. 

In my dream, Bob Dylan first made eye contact and then walked straight toward me with an outstretched arm bent slightly at the elbow, the crowd parting before him like the Red Sea parted before Moses. Transfixed, I resisted the instinctive urge to turn around, seeking where he had in mind to go. 

He couldn’t be looking at me, I thought. Still I stared, as struck by his unexpected steps off the stage as those around me. 

My Dream

In a nebulous, smoke-filled instant he stood before me, a head taller, his hand grasping the silver cross that lay on my chest. The cross came from Kenya, Africa, handmade by a Rafiki (“friend”) craftswoman who had designed the necklace with jade-green beads the size of garbanzo beans with smaller, pewter-colored inserts leading down to the central cross. Rough-cut from silver with crude openings formed a kind of metal lace etched on the flat surface. A heavy piece of jewelry, I saw Dylan’s hand clutch the cross as if he might rip it from around my neck, but then his fingers unfurled so that the cross itself rested on his open palm. His palm seemed lit by a light whose source I could not track yet the light shone so precise that the room itself receded in darkness. I looked up first into his face, then down at the cross in his hand. From behind him, stage lights framed his features in dark silhouette; the wide-brimmed hat he wore cast its own shadow on the aging face with dark, penetrating holes for eyes. I strained to see whether his eyes had a catch-light to reflect that he was alive. That he had a soul. Suddenly aware of a cool breeze wafting between us, I thought that he wanted my cross. 

That’s when I woke up. From under the covers, the smell of coffee punctured my stupor, offering a routine summons to move beyond the bed.

The dream felt so real that as I stirred myself to begin the day, I continued to wonder if this had actually happened. So, I wrote down details of this dream before I forgot.

But the concert was tonight. Did the dream mean that meeting Bob Dylan would happen? 

I wore that necklace, just in case. 

This Rainy Day Woman

Before the Bob Dylan concert, I thought the cost was just the price of admission.  Outside in drizzly, forty-degree weather, we stood in line for over an hour. Wriggling my toes, shifting my weight, thoughts of hot chocolate swam through my head.

Watching birds fly overhead, lighting first on buildings and often on wires, then circling, swooping en masse, skyscrapers in the background, the question kept forming: How do these creatures know? Do the birds follow a leader? How do I know where I’m supposed to be? Or what I’m supposed to do with my one precious life? Is it okay to be here, or should I be somewhere else?

Once ushered inside “The House of Blues,” my husband and I became part of the crushed-crowd of a couple-hundred to occupy the floor space in front of the stage, SRO. It took another hour and twenty minutes before the first announcement, another twenty before musicians stirred, then finally, at 8:22 p.m., Dylan walked on stage. One-hundred-and-five minutes later, I still managed to stand on the feet that had carried me through the day that started at 6:00 a.m., a day that included two classes and a test at Dallas Theological Seminary. Some days exceed known weight-bearing capacity; it helps to have a good understanding. 

At the concert, we stood close. I mean fifteen-feet away. I could see Bob Dylan’s wrinkles. Graying curls coiled beneath the white, gaucho-style felt hat he came out wearing. A well-groomed, Fagan-like mustache and beard decorated Dylan’s then sixty-six-year-old face. He wore boots under his black pants that had a gold stripe down the side of each leg, and a rose-colored shirt beneath a buttoned suit jacket.

Trans-generational, the audience shouted “Bob, Bob, Bob” in thumping approval. 

My husband tells me that Bob Dylan had become a Christian, something I did not know before we went to the concert.

In my dream, Dylan was reaching for the cross.

To Seminary and Beyond

I came to seminary uncertain how that had happened or if I had dreamed it. Responding to an opportunity I had never imagined, much less wanted, I walked about in a trance for weeks of months. I questioned what I had committed to and why. I thought the price of admission included the actual cost.

Memories of that first year: head down, looking at my footsteps, repeating to myself, “Count the cost.”

At the Bob Dylan concert I found myself doing the same thing I had done when I came to DTS. I looked at my feet a lot. Straining to see between the heads of those taller than I, bobbing right, then left, sometimes it worked best if I would just listen to the music. Hey, I was here. And being there is 80%, right? 

The parallel between the concert and seminary made me realize my life works best when I listen to the music.

Straining to make sense of it all, to see past heads to the stage where any fleetingly famous figure rocks and does their thing, I tend to project faulty impressions and formulate skewed conclusions about life based mostly on what’s seen.

Although I really did see Bob Dylan in person and I really did graduate with a Master’s degree from seminary, at times I have trouble separating the dreams from the reality.

So extraordinary––different from anything I might have envisioned happening in my life.

Faith is not a dream.

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. . . . But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.”

Hebrews 11:1,6 NKJV

Faith continually enables me to see the unseen hand of God guiding my steps, teaching me, and writing my story.

Faith in God keeps me kept.

One of my professors said, “The only reward for faith is God’s approval.”