Aloha, Jeremy!

In my last post, "Local boy called as janitor," I recount a dream in which I saw what I took to be a reference to my brother Luther on a bulletin board in the Mormon chapel in Kirtland, Ohio. (Kirtland happens to be very important in Mormon history, but in my case the link is personal: I lived in the Kirtland Stake in my teens and have been in that chapel countless times.) 

That same night (night of February 12-13), I had another dream of which my memory is extremely fragmentary. I think it also took place in Kirtland. There was a small group of people who, although I'm pretty sure they were White, expected me to greet them "in the Hawaiian way," which meant saying aloha for "good-bye" but something else (I think it was nuwa or something similar to that) for "hello." I found that confusing, since I'd always thought aloha meant both "hello" and "good-bye," but I thought it would be rude to ask them about it. That's really all I remember of that dream.

The afternoon after these two dreams, I wanted something to listen to while I did some housework, and for some reason YouTube recommended a rather old (2014) interview by John Dehlin of Jeremy Runnells. I didn't have anything better in mind, so sure, why not? Mr. Runnells is apparently something of a celebrity in ex-Mormon circles, but I left the CJCLDS in 2002 and had long since stopped following such things by the time he made his big splash, so I didn't know anything about him. I didn't listen to the whole interview, but several bits jumped out at me in connection with my dreams.

First, as Mr. Runnells is talking about his experience growing up in the CJCLDS, he mentions out of the blue that one of his bishops in California used to greet people with aloha:

The ward that I was in was just fantastic. I had awesome bishops. One of the bishops was Hawaiian. Every week, "Brothers and sisters, aloha."

Later he talks about serving as a missionary in New York City and being there when 9/11 happened. My brother Luther was also a missionary in New York City when 9/11 happened, so there's a better than even chance that they actually know each other.

Then he talks about a Church leader doing a Q&A:

Well, he was asked by someone in the audience what his thoughts were regarding the droves of members that are leaving the Church over Google, over history. His response was basically we're experiencing an apostasy that we haven't seen since Kirtland over history.

So there's aloha, Kirtland, and a biographical detail that fits my brother Luther. I'm not sure what that means, but the way it matches my dreams of the night before is interesting.

Note added (February 15):

A pen friend sent me a link to a podcast by Whitley Strieber on YouTube -- an interview with Andy Thomas about crop circles. Oddly, given my long-running interest in Strieber, I didn't even know he was on that platform. I listened to it while exercising, not realizing that I had the autoplay feature on, and when the interview finished the algorithm served up another recent video from Strieber's channel: "Science and Magic in Hawai'i." After the intro music, the very first words spoken in this video are: "Aloha, Dreamland! My name is Jeremy Vaeni" -- a White guy named Jeremy saying aloha. Dreamland is the name of the program, but I suppose it also syncs with my dream about White people expecting me to say aloha to them.

I haven't listened to Vaeni interview yet, but I'm updating the title of this post to "Aloha, Jeremy!"