The gift of dreams (more on Twelve Tribes...)

God helps me in my dreams, especially in dealing with community stuff. I have very vivid dreams of things I don't think about during waking hours. I dream about situations that help me understand what happened at the community and why people became as they did. Why it became about laws and regulations, though that is not everyone's heart there, nor intent. The law just trapped them, as it does, and many fight against it, as I tried to. Many there do have a fervent love for our Savior that is altogether genuine. I thought about all these things as I woke up this morning.
I thought about what I missed. Definitely some of my friends. Definitely yearning  to work together for a cause higher than all of us; definitely serving others together; the separateness from the complex world culture;  the eating of food that we harvested with our own hands, or whom friends harvested and prepared, the dancing celebrations. The Spirit was there too sometimes as it is everywhere where people believe.
But there is much more I don't miss- the accusations and put downs, the constant assumptions or suspicions about my motives of heart, the questioning and challenging of all my prior beliefs and experiences. It was beginning to want to brainwash me, in fact some there believed I needed to be brain "washed". In most of their eyes I had just begun regeneration- I had not REALLY been saved until I was baptized into their group. And I sort of fell for that for a short time. I wanted to fit there because they seemed so devoted and genuine and they seemed to love me, and I loved them. But they did want to change EVERYTHING about me. I was a "newborn" baby to them, when I joined. My prior 15 years of faith mattered NOTHING. I didn't want to see this was true.
I don't believe EVERYONE thought this way, but the vast majority did.  I came to know a few who didn't and they are the reason I stayed for as long as I did. I loved them and they loved me as best as we could, and of course, I miss them.
I don't think most there want to be trapped in a stale religion that entraps, but many don't know any other way of life (like all those born and raised in the community). They see the world as a cage, not just because they've been told it's a cage. They themselves see the corruption, many have experienced it, only to return to community life. Many thoughtful people there weigh where the corruption is worse- is it in the community or the world? I weighed that same thing. We all want wholesome lives that reflect our Savior. The world entraps and corrupts, when we let it. But the world is EVERYWHERE. We can't escape it on this earth. We are in it no matter WHERE we are at, we are just not to be of it. And that is the call for true believers everywhere, always; it has been and will be for all of history- To not let the world in us (the corrupted world under the prince of the air...)
But his yoke is easy and his burden light. And He is the one that keeps us, saves us, rescues us, because we are his own and no one can say otherwise.