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A few days passed and Elliot had been posting a little on social media about the Dropout Movement. He’d originally posted about the celebration the school was hosting the Friday after next, then the conversation took a turn toward deeper subject matter. Elliot was advocating for the parents of those students who refused to go to school. He posted a comment saying, “they have two options: Let you skip forever or call the police and make you go back. Just go to school and save them the trouble.” Of course this got him labeled as a turncoat by the hardcore “droppers” as they were called. They were a serious group that was getting organized, even working on arranging living quarters for other droppers who couldn’t go home.

This would all blow over, Elliot thought. He just wanted Friday to go well. He’d formed a short notice last minute band so he could have some accompaniment on his songs at the party. Standard four member rock group, lead guitar/vocals, bass, drums, and keys. Elliot’s parents agreed to park in the driveway for a week to let them practice in the garage. They were happy he was doing something to help put the scandal to rest.

While they were practicing one day another dream took place. The house itself lifted away and the band as well as Elliot’s parents found themselves in a magical forest full of glowing trees and exotic luminous wildlife. They couldn’t control where they went but they were floating through the trees as bright colorful animals swung and flew peacefully around them. The experience was heightened by a feeling of childlike wonder and pure love for the life of the forest and for every living thing.

Leonard Harris and his family were packing for their vacation to Hawaii. He’d given notice to the stadium of the dates when he’d be gone the following week, which was short notice but Leonard was known by his coworkers to be a nice guy and had no trouble finding someone to cover for him.

“Are you girls ready to see all the lizards and fish and beautiful animals of the tropical rainforest?” his wife asked his daughters.

“Yes,” they answered in unison.

“I don’t think the animals just go up to people and say, “Hello, look at my pretty colors,” said Leonard.

“Oh, of course they do. If not we’ll go to the Hawaiian zoo.”

“Yeyyy,” the girls shouted.

The parents had each of their suitcases open on the bed and were tossing their lighter clothes into them. When the suitcases were about halfway full the clothes floated up and out and expanded as if people were wearing them. The sound of a ukulele could be heard, faintly at first, and then louder while the clothes began to dance as if at a luau. The children couldn’t contain themselves and immediately started bouncing to the music and laughing, crying with joy as they danced with the floating clothes. Soon the parents joined in and the whole room was full of lively sound and movement.

“Looks like Hawaii came to us,” he said.

Over at St. Perpetua’s Hospital Ethan was attending his first group therapy session. They were going around in a circle sharing one thing about why they were there, or what they wanted to accomplish, their goals for therapy.

“Hi, my name’s Ethan. I’m in here because… Have you ever had someone at work that just bothers you?”

“Yep, yes, yeah,” the others answered.

“Well, there’s this guy I worked with who had it out for me. Why, I don’t know. Everything was a competition with him and he’d never help if someone needed something. Anyway things got to a point where he did stuff just to bother me. I mean he would go out of his way to make my day worse and worse. Serious business, sabotaging my accounts, and I couldn’t get any proof. One day, after being angry at this man for a long time, I just caught him in the parking lot and punched him as hard as I could right in the solar plexus. He doubled over wheezing, and I whispered in his ear he better get out of town tonight or else. The man left and things went back to normal at work.”

“Sounds like he got what he deserved,” said one of the group members.

“Maybe he did,” said Ethan, “but all the time I spent hating him, that was on me. The Bible says we’re not supposed to harbor anger toward anyone, it says forgive and leave it up to God. I’ll tell you the anger I had for him ate me up inside, and that’s my sin. Anger like that is a sin, and God sent me to Hell for it.”

“What? Like actual Hell?”

“Yes,” he answered.

“Okay, thank you for sharing. Who’s next?”

“Tell us about Hell. Demons, screaming, torture…”

“You bet,” said Ethan.

“Stop,” said the therapist, “enough about hell, we’re moving on.”

People tend to focus on the positive, the things that make us smile, feel happier, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Part of what was going on in Weatherview, besides the miraculous dreams, had to do with bad parts of people’s lives. Ethan had gone to Hell for focusing his anger toward someone for a long time. Now he’s repenting for it. The definition of repent is, “to feel deep sorrow, regret, or contrition for a past action, decision, or sin, and to make a sincere mental or behavioral commitment to change.” As the mayor said and as so many residents had come to believe, repentance was the necessary step the whole city should take. Indeed it was the intended purpose of the dreams themselves, to show forth God’s goodness and bring people to the recognition of their sins and the commitment to leading more holy lives.