The gorilla in the room

Just before waking on a Sunday morning, I dreamed I attended a party given by a Christian woman I’ve met only once. People chatted in small groups on her spacious, well-manicured lawn.

During the party, I spotted a door that led into a hill. An empty lounge chair sat in front of the door. People stood talking near it. I moved the chair, wove through the people and found the door unlocked. It opened easily.

Once inside, I descended a long flight of wooden steps, then walked down a stark hallway, my footsteps clicking on the bare floors. Reaching a closed door, I opened it.

Before me lay a long room, empty except for a loose weaving of massive ropes near the far end. The ropes dangled from ceiling to floor and intersected in a giant crisscross pattern.

Standing in the doorframe, I peered across the room. A massive black thing dangled from the ropes. The black thing began to climb. “It’s a gorilla!” I shouted.

The gorilla jumped to the floor. Deliberately, it lumbered toward me. I slammed the door and began searching for the latch. To my surprise, the door had three latches. To my dismay, all were flimsy. Securing latch number 1, I wrapped a piece of leather around a nail. Fumbling with latch 2, then 3, I knew: If that gorilla challenged those latches, none would hold.

“There’s a gorilla in here!” I shouted, running down the long hall. A young girl with blonde hair passed me. “I want to see the gorilla,” she said cheerfully. Then, the girl’s blonde mom ran past. I didn’t try to stop the girl, but I did tell her mom, “The door won’t hold that gorilla!”

I bounded up the stairs, shouting, “There’s a gorilla in there!”

Then, I woke up.

You’ve heard of “the elephant in the room”? It’s not a literal elephant. It’s a truth that looms so large, people cannot miss it, yet is so awkward and uncomfortable, people refuse to acknowledge or address it.

I saw the gorilla in the room.

In my dream, the people at the party didn’t intentionally overlook the gorilla. They couldn’t see him because he was kept below the surface. The gorilla stayed in the hidden room with rickety locks until he saw the way out.

FYI: Gorillas are endangered and typically not violent. They have more to fear from humans than humans do from them. However, adult gorillas weigh a lot, and on rare occasions a gorilla has attacked people. When one came my direction, I didn’t wait to see if he came in peace. I ran to warn, not so someone could eliminate the gorilla but so that, when he emerged, people wouldn’t get hurt.

You want to know what else I’ve seen? Truth locked away generations ago is emerging. We, the churched in the US, have stood atop this truth all our lives without seeing it. Now, it rips through doors that cannot hold it. Some run, childlike, toward it. Some flee in terror. Some try desperately to shoot such big, weighty, scary truth. After all, it disrupts our party.

Yet this gorilla can neither be dodged nor shot. “There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known,” says Luke 12:2-3. “What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs.”

In my dream, I saw the gorilla in the room. I ran to announce, “It’s coming out!”

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Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, Today’s New International Version™ TNIV ®, Copyright © 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society ®. All rights reserved worldwide.

You too can learn more about gorillas at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorilla, http://www.un.org/works/OLD/environment/animalplanet/gorilla.html, and
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4558461.