I am a college student, & I have a priest-friend. He runs a Christian Library at the college, but it’s in danger of being torn down. I am lobbying for his library to be saved. More specifically, I am lobbying for the college to pay for the library to get appraised, but the appraisal is of a strange type. Its intention is not to determine the monetary value of the library, but rather to determine its SPIRITUAL WORTH; what the overarching MESSAGE of the library would be if one were to read EVERY BOOK it contained. If this message is ‘good,’ then the spiritual wor th of the library is high, & the library won’t be torn down.

I find myself in the bleachers at a college football game, half entertained / half annoyed by the surrounding fans & the game itself, but that setting quickly dreammorphs into a church, & I am alone. Immediately, being in the church feels boring, or unnecessary, so I leave to go hang out in my priest-friend’s library. The priest is standing by the door with an open book. I slap a hello onto his shoulder as I walk by, interrupting his reading, & continue on through the glass doors. (I don’t want to talk; I was just saying hi. I know he thinks I should be in church, but I don’t want to be in church. I am not the religious sort. I want him to know that I care about his library & hope that he thinks this is just as good.)

The library is made of pale green glass, inside & out, so that sunlight is playing everywhere upon the shelves & books. I see the dean of the college sitting in a small room in the corner—some kind of office. She is an angry woman around 50 with short dyed-red hair. I go to champion my cause:

I say that we need to get the library appraised. I say that not only should we find out the library’s spiritual worth, but we should also determine WHY we want to get it appraised, from the appraiser. The dean looks confused, & the priest is there too, in the background, & he’s listening to the conversation & he’s confused too, & I worry about offending him. My message is convoluted, & I’m aware that it’s hard to explain. I say that of course we need to get the library appraised—that’s no longer in question—but we also need to know how important the actual appraisal is to us, because our DESIRE, in & of itself, to save the library, automatically makes the library worth something SPIRITUALLY, even before knowing what MESSAGE the library contains. I go on to explain (in dream-logic) that the SPIRITUAL WORTH of this DESIRE can only be determined by appraising the library itself, because the SPIRITUAL WORTH of the DESIRE to save something can only be measured by holding it against the SPIRITUAL WORTH of the ACTUAL THING.

The dean gets annoyed by all the abstract talk & just says, “Well, that’s the appraiser’s job,” which is true. She walks grumpily away, but in saying this, she has reluctantly agreed to let the library get appraised, & I turn to the priest & smirk.