Is this a dream

To wake from one sort of dream into another; a sense of everything that had been solid was now demonstrating how easy it is to become fluid waves of energy. At three thirty this morning (Monday 6 April) the effects from an earthquake 70 miles north of Rome made themselves felt. For those few seconds – was it half a minute? – there was terror and a radical ignorance/indecisiveness. I could hear doors opening and closing, voices in the corridor but I stayed where I was, in bed, in the dark, waiting. At what point would I have made a late dash for the world outside? But if the building were to collapse, I was thinking, where would the best place to be? Was it safe anywhere? Though I wished for an immediate transfer to Totnes I also had to accept that it was an unlikely outcome. The weird movements of the building diminished, subsided and were no more. It was probably an hour or two before I returned to sleep. When I woke with the alarm I had such a struggle to persuade myself to get up that I forgot all about 'the dream' until a little later in the sacristy when somebody asked me, ' did you . . . ?' and then the news was being passed around, mostly in whispers because we're still in silent retreat mode, of an earthquake somewhere north of Rome and there were dead . . . Shock, gratitude, what can I do to help . . .