Dream from Mark Thomas

On June 25, 2008, I gave a sacrament meeting speech at the hospice facility on 4500 South. I accepted the invitation reluctantly, thinking that I should come to listen rather than speak. I arrived with a reluctant gratitude. I decided to tell them about a recent dream I had experienced, shortly after Grandpa Thomas’s funeral.

In this dream I found myself in pine covered mountains with a group of friends. These friends were there to run a marathon. I started running at the first of the race to give them moral support. But after running a short while, I realized “I can finish this race!” So I ran to finish it. I was slower than my friends. So by the time that I finished the race, my friends had all gone home. The race finished at a large wooden building. I went inside. The building was apparently empty. I wandered around the building hoping to find someone that could give me a ride home. To my surprise, I saw my Dad. He was about 30 years old, tall with black hair, just as remembered him as a child. “Hi pal, do you need a ride home?” he asked me. Yes, I did.

I told my audience about this dream and told them that I had learned two things from it. First, I started a race that I didn’t even consider running. But there were powers once I started to run, that arose within me, that I didn’t know that I possessed. I have come to believe that this is a universal experience. When the crises comes, hidden powers that we do not even recognize arise to our aid to help each of us finish our race in life.

The second thing that I learned from the dream is that none of us is alone. We possess thousands of generations within our own bodies, our own DNA, that go wherever we go. The dead have great power, and we embody it. None of us goes through or out of this life alone. We are surrounded by thousands. Then I turned to the handful of elderly that I was addressing: “I noticed that this is a large wooden building we are in. Does anyone need a ride home?”