pics of Metanoia Peace Community

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Here's my gargantuan bedroom, which I wasn't expecting at all:

My first night in that bedroom, I had a strange dream. I don't normally tell people about my dreams, and I don't normally remember my dreams, anyway, but I do remember some of this one and find it too weird not to talk about.

While I've forgotten many of the particulars of this dream, I do remember that it was about multiplication-- not necessarily in the mathematical sense, though I suppose it necessarily had that aspect to it, but more in the visual sense of watching things multiply. I can't explain what I saw in the dream except to say it felt like events that were multiplying all around me, like new universes sprouting. Visually, the effect was like watching a thick soup as it was building to a rolling boil: a lump appears on the surface, then breaks into smaller lumps; other lumps appear, and so on. Instead of soup, imagine looking at events. That's what I was seeing. I don't know how else to explain it. Stuff was happening, then more stuff, and exponentially more stuff, and my mind's eye panned across the whole roiling mess.

Many sci-fi authors have tackled this sort of thing, so my dream could have come from that source, but what was different here was that, unlike the way it usually goes in those sci-fi scenarios, the events weren't the offspring of my choices-- the splitting was occurring for no discernible reason. The emotion that accompanied this vision was also strange, now that I think about it: I was serene in the face of this boiling, fulsome, ramifying reality.

Below: a shot toward the front door I took while sitting in front of the fireplace yesterday evening (Wednesday, July 9). It was around 7PM and I was waiting for folks to show up for our talk on interreligious issues.



Then the time for our talk rolled around, Pastor John suggested we move out to the front porch, which immediately reminded me of my talk with Genjo, which also took place on the front porch of his zendo. The following pic shows all the discussants but one, who I didn't realize had been cut off in the photo when I took it.



From left to right, we've got Steve (knee brace cap on knee); he's an avid biker and has done a trans-America bike trip), his wife Laurie, Pastor John, Jim (who spent part of the talk snoring; he'd been working on the house all day, so I certainly don't blame him for conking out), Karl (who contributes a ton of great content to the various discussions), Bruce (who adopted a Korean son who is now 30-something), Trudy (I hope I'm spelling that right; she's a yoga practitioner), Jo (I think that's her name; Jo is very sweet and very quiet); and Bruce's wife (Ann, unfortunately cut off in this picture).

The discussion was fantastic, and yielded over 90 minutes of audio. Oy. More and more transcription to be done!

Next pic: flags at the front of the house. It's a huge house, by the way; it has innumerable bedrooms and all sorts of nooks and crannies. I now think of it as America's answer to Hogwarts Castle: every time you turn a corner, there's a new room or a new set of stairs. Amazing.



Below: the front door.



A closer look at the front door's windows (1):



A closer look at the front door's windows (2):



This following pic was taken from the front steps earlier today; it shows the front garden and the stone path, which is laid out as a meditative labyrinth.



One feature of the front garden is this compelling piece of artwork done, I'm told, in a Native American tradition: a precariously balanced stone. I couldn't stop staring.



Even at a distance, the house is too big to capture entirely:



Off to the side is more greenery, along with this "Peace Pole":



In this shot, I've backed up a bit and shown off the pole's other two sides:



While walking to the public library again today, I took this shot of the Willamette River while standing on Broadway Bridge:



And last of all, here's a shot of the bridge I was on:



Portland is, like so many of the cities I visited in Washington, worth a longer visit than I'm giving it.




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