"Every revolution begins with a spark"

-The other night I rolled over in the middle of the night to shake my partner awake, proceeded to tell him how I was glad that ‘this time round we would truly have the freedom to love each other properly’ and how his hands belonged to his last self, but his eyes had never changed in all the lives I’d known him. And he just laid there in the dark like wtf because I was asleep. Like I’d woken him to tell him that all in my sleep and then left him to have a crisis.

- Watching the history channel with my Pop on the couch, tender age of 7, and they’re talking about crucifixion. And my pop, ever the funny man, is like “that looks like it aughta hurt”. And I just turn to look at him and without hesitation reply “only at first”. And he’s like “what do you mean” and tiny me just shrugged and said “well there’s a place beyond the hurt where everything just stops” and he turned the telly off and left the room.

- night before Christmas 2012, dreamt I’d been stabbed in the lungs by an angel with the face of a falcon. He looked at me and told me he had to do it, so that ‘my next breath would come as a rebirth’. When he started to glow so brightly that it burned my eyes, I woke up to all the lights in my house on and a dark bruise beneath my rib cage. Will admit, that one freaked me out.

- walked past a graveyard with a friend back in middle school on the way to her house, and mid conversation I stopped talking and stood stock still, looked over at the walls,and quietly said “I have a friend in there”. Then picked up the conversation and continued strolling like nothing had happened. To be fair, I didn’t realise what I’d said. She still tells me I’m the reason she can’t walk past that graveyard anymore.

- a couple of years ago when I was in Wales I walked past an old stone house just outside of Aberystwyth, and just started to weep. I had the overwhelming thought that I needed to be in there to get dinner ready for the children, but in a different life so long ago and so impossible to reach, that thefeeling of loss was instant and overwhelming.

- was about to use a pedestrian crossing, when my whole body just sort of went hey don’t do that, and so I stopped and put my arm out to stop the woman who was crossing behind me, and 2 seconds later a car came skidding around the corner and crashed into the tree on the other side of the crossing, and I just whispered “ha, not this time” and didn’t really think about it until later when I realised I’d nearly died again. (Btw i waited for th ambulance to show up and the dude driving the car was fine, just hit his head and was drunk af at 10:30am on a Thursday).

- another dream I had just this week, I was sitting in an otherwise empty cinema with a tall, thin man. I can’t really recall what he looked like, except he was well dressed, impossibly pale, and he kind of blurred when you looked directly at him, so I mainly watched him out the corner of my eye and looked ahead at the blank movie screen. He was holding my hand, and he asked me if i enjoyed my life. I said yes and explained why. He then said, almost verbatim, “And how does this one weigh against the last? Can it tip the scales, or is it, at last, to be found lacking?” And I replied, almost verbatim “I weigh my lives against my joy, and each life I find there is more joy to be discovered.” He replied with a laugh, lifted my hand to a kiss and said “till next time then” and disappeared. I woke up in the dark with both my cats sitting on me, alert, and staring out my bedroom door.

My sister and I have also been known to argue in our sleep. Witnesses assure us that whatever made the shouting start, we both knew what it was and were mad about it. We don’t need to be in the same room for this.

My great grandmother died when I was very young (like four years old). I told my parents that she had come to say goodbye to me before leaving. I knew she was dead before they did.

Sharing dreams was mentioned and while I’ve never had the same dream at the same time as someone else, I have regularly had dreams about a woman named Faith. For years, I didn’t tell anyone about her bc tbh she kind of creeps me out and is soothing in equal parts. Come to find out, my dad also has dreams with Faith in them and his dreams involving her deal a lot with death, like mine do.

Every house I’ve lived in since I was a child has been haunted, but they haven’t all started out that way. My grandmother thinks it is the family that is haunted, not the places. (There’s that family curse coming back in to play.)

I’ve had a reoccurring nightmare since childhood involving running through a city with cobblestone streets as a child along with several others. By the end of the nightmare, me and all the children have died. The first time I had this nightmare, I woke up crying and saying that everyone had died again and I still couldn’t stop it.

They were probably late teens to early 20s, given the time and the description and some Biblical passages.

They were not ancient old men with long beards and wrinkles at the Last Supper.

Probaly they were all underage except for Peter. In Exodus 30:14-15, Jewish law states that every male over the age of 20 is to pay a half-shekel as census offering when they visit the temple of God. In Matthew 17:24-27, Jesus instructs Peter to “fish up” this tax. Peter finds a shekel in the mouth of the fish he catches; enough to pay the tax for two men, himself and Jesus. You could conclude that the others were underage and did not need to pay.

In Matthew 11:25, Luke 10:21, and John 13:33, Jesus calls his disciples little children .

We learn that Peter had a wife when Jesus healed his mother-in-law. In those ancient times, a Jewish man receives a wife after the age of 18. Again, no other disciples’ wives are mentioned, so they are unmarried and probably under 18.

Jewish children began intensive study at young ages, but education for most concluded by age 15. For those bright (or wealthy) enough, higher education consisted of studying under a local rabbi. If they didn’t find a rabbi that accepted them as a student then they entered the workforce by their mid teens. The disciples, already working-men, must have been rejected  by other rabbis when Jesus hand-picked them for further education as his disciples. In light of this, a younger age is more probable than older. A youth would be in the mindset of continuing his education. A man over 30 leaving his trade to follow a rabbi would be counter-cultural , although not impossible.

The behavior of the disciples, as detailed in the gospels, fits well with the zealous nature and foolishness of adolescence. Picture a gang of teens instead of work-hardened men in the boat when the storm hit, fear-stricken and waking up Jesus for help. The forgetful and distracted nature of youth helps me understand how they could hear Jesus say he would die and come back to life, yet act as they did when these things happened. When we age them under twenty, we can understand Jesus’ patience with them, his low expectations of their behavior, and his teaching style.

“Ew don’t bring your little kids around the master, he’s teaching.”

“Let the little children come to me. The kingdom of heaven is made up of them.”

Use this helpful chart I created using random adverb, adjective, and noun generators and our dear friend Microsoft Excel: