not a good cantor

Last night I had this disturbing dream. I was standing in the middle of a room, and many of the people I know and love were sitting around the perimeter of the room. With me, in the center of this large room, was a young woman of unknown identity. She was talking and I was listening, and praying, and soon it became evident that there was a huge struggle going on... a spiritual battle for this woman's life. I began to pray and clumsily speak words to stave off demons and bring in the big gun angels and all that. In my dream I felt a bit intimidated at first, but then sort of gained confidence in how God was using me. I did on occasion glance over to my friends who were clearly just sitting on their asses and not helping me in any way, but my attention would quickly be averted by something this young woman said and I would go back to praying over her. I was hugging her and praying, mostly. That's about it. Pretty soon she calmed down and it became evident that she was 'okay', whatever that means.

Then my friends walked up to me and began to critique my method of praying for this woman. I don't remember most of the words but I remember the feeling that I had let them down, and also feeling confused because I thought I had done a pretty good job until they came up and started talking smack on me.

The one thing I do remember them saying was this: "It's not your gift, Jamie. You're just not a good cantor."

So I woke up with these words ringing in my head, which was weird because I suddenly had images of Danny Kaye (whom everyone is too young to remember) in some old movie about Eddie Cantor, and I don't even know who Eddie Cantor is, really. And there was also some faint recollection of some Neil Diamond movie--which is just plain scary--about a cantor. I looked 'cantor' up on Answers.com and it is defined in the following way:

can·tor (kăn'tər)

n. The Jewish religious official who leads the musical part of a service.

1. The person who leads a church choir or congregation in singing; a precentor.

[Latin, singer, from canere, to sing.]

can·to'ri·al (kăn-tôr'ē-əl, -tŏr'-) adj.

Yeah. So that's it. Pretty weird. But not the strangest dream I've ever had. Not even close.