church

I was inside a small church with a high ceiling, stained glass windows and sandy cement rendered walls. There was a fireplace built into the wall at the front of the church, directly underneath the largest of the stained glass windows, where an alter would usually have been. I was tending the flames and trying to catch the small sticks that had tumbled out of the fire and onto the stone floor, catching alight the tinder that was scattered around the hearth. There were other people milling around the fire. Finally, I seemed to have the fire contained to the fireplace, so I stood back, toward the centre of the church, and looked up to the central stained glass window. There was light streaming through the window, red, yellow and colourless glass creating a pattern like a mandala. Suddenly, there was a great shift in the feeling of the room and the heavy wooden frame of the window dislodged from the wall, the building rumbling with movement. Everyone began to scream and I raised my voice in a kind of singing wail, both to echo and to sing the sound of the walls collapsing. The window began to cave in, glass shattering and creamy gold walls turning to rubble around me. I woke with the sound of my voice still ringing in my ears and a sensation of something like pins and needles in my whole body.