Exercises, Dreams and Snakes

Some years ago I was doing a fairly regular exercise routine based on the program developed by the Canadian Airforce and called ‘11 Minutes a Day’ (12 minutes if female). This is a graduated program of increasingly demanding exercises that are to be completed in a maximum of 11 minutes and designed to keep you fit, lean and healthy. Those who know me can testify to the obvious and positive effects of this! This exercise routine was resurrected as the ice-breaker for our Lifegroup last week by one of our very energetic ladies who has been following this program herself for some years. It certainly proved to be the most original ice-breaker I have known in a small group context! All 14 of us varying from the reed thin to the somewhat more substantially built spilled out of the modest sized lounge in which we were meeting to overflow into hallway and kitchen as we flung ourselves to the ground to perform, what for me, was a rather nostalgic routine. The highlight came at the conclusion of the exercises as all 14 of us did 50 high knee running jumps on the spot in concert together in a way that could surely have challenged for a place on one of the current TV talent shows. It was also a test of the strength of the floorboards, which held up well, much to the relief of the house owners!

Following this we had a somewhat breathless discussion on the subject of dreams as we were responding to the Sunday message about Joseph in prison interpreting the dreams of Pharoah’s cupbearer and baker. It turned out that some of us felt that we had never experienced a significant dream in our life while others testified that God had even identified a life partner through a dream. It appears that some of the men in the group are not yet old enough to dream dreams as promised in the Bible!

While on the subject of dreams it would be easy to begin a discussion also on the subject of nightmares  and I wouldn’t be surprised if some didn’t express that dreaming about snakes could be a real nightmare for them. Over the last few days we have had a short break away from Cape Town and been staying in an area known as Plettenberg Bay on South Africa’s famed Garden Route - an extremely beautiful coastal area of the country. There are a variety of tourist attractions available and we elected to visit a snake park. Being the only ones in the park at the time we had the young man, who acts as guide to show visitors around, all to ourselves. He clearly really loves snakes ( and has only been bitten twice!!) and seemed to have  comprehensive knowledge of his subject. Eventually I asked him whether he’d studied snakes at a College of some kind, wondering whether perhaps he had a BA in serpentology or similar. But he replied by saying that he’d learnt all he knows by observation and that many things he reads in books about snakes are actually not correct, something that proved very interesting towards the close of the tour. We picked up a couple of snakes, learned not to cosy up to black mambas - bad idea - and I even now have a photo of an albino python draped around my neck. Pythons of course are constrictors but this snake obviously didn’t find me interesting enough to constrict me - I should have thought after all those Canadian exercises….. But this was the really interesting part, he showed us claws on the underside of the python and told us (as I have indeed heard previously) that scientists say that they are actually the vestiges of legs that snakes used to have but have now lost in the process of evolution and presently serve no purpose. However, this very knowledgeable and observant young man told us that what he had noticed is that the pythons use these claws to grip hold of another snake and work their way along it to gain the right position for mating. So the possibility is that snakes have always had these claws and used them for the same purpose and that they are not evidence of losing legs in an evolutionary process. Pleasant dreams!

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