“I had a political dream last night and I wanted to give you a call,” a sleepy-sounding Allison said on a voice message at 8 o’clock on Halloween morning. A long pause, and then … she wished me well and hung up.

I called and emailed my friend several times to learn about her dream. Then, finally, around 3 o’clock on November 4, she left this: “Happy election day. I did not get back to you with my dream, because it was not a very good one…. Barack had won at/in (garbled) the polls, and then there was a kind of environment with a lot of riots. There was a movie going back on the human rights movement.

She then judged her dream instead of interpreting it: “It was not a good dream. That was why I was not looking forward to sharing it with you. I was not very proud of this dream. I do not know what it means.”

She added, “There is some hope. NPR reported yesterday morning on Michael Connell … his name is out there now.” (Connell’s computer firm was involved with Bush’s 2004 election campaign as well as McCain’s 2008 Republican campaign. Connell reportedly denied under oath he knew of any GOP effort to steal the 2004 election for Bush by rigging Ohio vote totals, Center for Legitimate Government, November 3, 2008)

Allison’s call came as exuberance was high anticipating a huge Obama win. I was annoyed she waited five days to share the dream — diminishing the chance of exploring its meaning and confronting its content.

Were the Republicans posed once again to steal the election? (How many of us woke up on November 5 with a bit of post-traumatic stress, recalling the two previous presidential election results flipping in the middle of the night?) Did massive voter turnout and raised awareness of election fraud prevent hijacking this presidential election? Did the outing of the Republican computer consultant Allison mentioned in her message put a kink in any Rovian plot to steal this election, too? (However, 6 million voters purged from the rolls, missing ballots, and malfunctioning voting machines may have compromised some House and Senate races and given Rove et al pre-election hope they could compromise the McCain-Obama race, too.)

Did a transformational change in American politics transform potential riots of disenfranchised voters into dancing in the streets all over the world?

On the other hand, is there still prophecy in Allison’s dream? Are the protests against the passage of Prop 8 in California (changing the state Constitution to deny marriage to same sex partners) a foreshadowing? Shamed and neutered Republicans, neo-cons, right-wing talk show hosts, shameful Klan, and pseudo-religious end-timers are already ginning up the hate they stoked during the Presidential campaign. Allison is an environmental guru ; she used the word “environment” in describing her dream. What environment might change?

Commentary on the Dream of Scipio by Macrobius detailed in Virtue says of dreams such as Allison’s:

“…all portents and dreams conform to the rule that their announcements, threats, or warnings of imminent adversity are always ambiguous. Consequently we surmount some difficulties by caution and others we escape by entreaty and propitiation, still others are inevitable, being turned away by no skill or powers ….”

As I teach and “preach,” our dreams appear in service to us. Nightmares reoccur until we hear and heed their message. The Universe wants us to remember, know, understand, and act — in a positive way — on the significance of our dreams.