Visions

There was a large spooky forest that bumped up to our backyard in the house where I spent my first five years.
My earliest clear memory was of that forest, and the frightening thing that emerged from it one day as I was playing in the backyard. My mother used to tell us it was time to go out and play, send us out back, and then lock the door. It was Enforced Playtime til her eyes stopped rattling in her head. While children are, as everyone knows, a source of great comfort and joy, four children under age 6 can stretch the definition of joy til it is almost like torture. I loved being outside, but the spooky forest really scared me. It was big, and dark and menacing and I knew that very large and dangerous things lived there. So I would stick close to the house and play with less scary things like the snakes under the doorstep.

Most of the time my siblings were near, so the forest didn't hold the terror it could have, but on the day of my vision , I was all alone. I don't know where my siblings were off to, probably stealing the farmer's corn and outrunning his shotgun, which was another favorite memory. (Well, ok, I am not quite certain I remember him actually shooting, but he did scream at us....I think.)

I was happily feeding apples to the snake, whom I called Slidey, when I saw something on the edge of the forest out of the corner of my eye. There was a lot of shouting and thrashing of underbrush, and horrible growling noises. I raced to the door, which of course was locked, and pounded on it. Mom's policy was the door remained locked for at least an hour, on a sliding scale
of time based on how long it had taken her to get us into all our outdoor clothes. If snowpants and boots and hats and scarves and mittens were involved for all four of us, we could count on being locked out til the next meal. This was a summer day, but nonetheless, Enforced Playtime was not over, and so children were still required to fend for themselves, unless "we saw blood".

I cringed against the door and opened one eye to see what unspeakable creepy thing had been raising the ruckus. It was then that I saw, clear as day, a large bear break out of the forest. Well, actually he did not break out of the forest.... he rolled out of the forest. It was a fearsome large brown bear, at least as tall as a large man, on roller skates. I huddled against the door, whispering, "Mom! Mommy... let me in. There is a bear!"
Fortunately, the bear stayed along the edge of the forest, and was actually skating quite well considering the less than ideal surface of tree roots and rutted ground. Why was a bear roller skating...? At the time, it did strike me as odd, but then the answer became clear. A farmer with a pitchfork burst out of the forest waving his arms and giving chase. It was obvious the bear needed to roller skate to outpace the man. I watched in amazement as they raced across the far backyard, and then both disappeared again back into the forest.

To this day, when my family feels I am not being quite accurate in my rendition of events, they will say, "Like the bear on roller skates?" and then smirk. I get the distinct impression that no one believes me. My blessed mother turns 78 on Valentine's Day, but I am sure she too remembers opening the door to the hysterical child telling her there was a bear on roller skates in our forest.

I have never been able to discern what message God was sending with that vision. Try as hard as I can, I cannot make sense of it. Surprisingly, bears are mentioned in the Bible. When the prophet Elisha is taunted by some youths who call him "bald head!", bears come out of the forest and maul them. Those bears were not roller skating. In Isaiah 59:11, the prophet mourns the state of a sinful people, lost in their sins, who don't know where to turn to find solace and atonement-
"We all growl like bears;
we moan mournfully like doves.
We look for justice, but find none;
for deliverance, but it is far away. "

That might explain the vision of the bear... God was reminding me of the horror of sin.... but the rolling part still flummoxed me. Roller skates had not been invented during Bible times, but there are zillions of references to things rolling. And amazingly, the rolling is usually a good thing, except in a few places like when God tells Jeremiah to tell his people He will "roll you off a cliff" because they refuse to repent. But in Joshua 5:9, God "rolls" away the reproach of Egypt from his people, and the most happy rolling of all occurs in the Gospels when the angel rolls away the large stone to reveal Jesus' empty tomb.

Of course, sometimes a bear on roller skates is just a bear on roller skates.