For the first time in almost two decades, I started my day by waking up from a very strange dream.
Most of my dreams have been dreams of ordinary life with, at most, a single odd element—a person or thing out of place, but familiar in another context.
This one started with an ordinary situation, singing in the Third Church Chancel Choir. 
Then, it got weird.
- We were not wearing our usual robes. Instead, we were wearing costumes that looked like a cross between characters in Heidi (women in dirndl skirts with puffy-sleeved white blouses, black bibs, white stockings and clogs) and an unusually inclusive Sound of Music cast (men in old-fashioned nun’s habits).
- We were not in our usual place. The choir was in the standing room space at the top of the Family Circle in the Metropolitan Opera House in NYC, behind a 10 foot wall.
- The organ was hanging from the railing at the front of the balcony, with a small side platform for the brass band. The string section was on stage with the altar and clergy, a looooong way away.
- None of us had trouble seeing the conductor, who was standing inside the chandelier.
- Readers were the cast from an early Star Wars movie. Psalms are scary when they are read antiphonally by Darth Vader and Jabba the Hutt.
- For the benediction response, the choir spread out into the aisles (all 400 of us) and the entire audience sang along in four part harmony. The music was an interesting arrangement of the bridal chorus from Lohengrin, with a text from one of Grimm’s fairytales.
Our octavos were hand-written in medieval neumes.
I woke up just as Betsy Marvin asked me if I was going to coffee hour. Too bad. The food might have been interesting.
