“I have a question for you. Can I meet my guardian angel in my dreams?”

The question was posed during a break in an evening dream workshop I was leading at an Episcopal church in New York. The questioner was a middle-aged woman who had clearly given a great deal of her life to service. Her gray dress matched her gray hair; she was very earnest, and appeared a little tired.

“Absolutely,” I replied. I don’t beat around the bush. I proceeded to explain how she could set the intention, before sleep, of meeting her guardian angel during the night.

“I’m familiar with your technique,” she said briskly. “I’ve tried it three times.”

“So what happened?”

She looked wan. “Three times, I asked to meet my guardian angel in my dreams. And three times, I dreamed of Garfield the cat.”

“Angel means messenger,” I said, improvising. “Is there a sense in which Garfield could be a messenger for you?”

She was clearly puzzled.

“Suppose I have just arrived from outer space,” I coaxed her. “That’s not so hard to imagine, is it? I have never heard of Garfield the cat. What could you say about Garfield, to explain him to a space alien?”

“Well,” she slowly entered the game. “Garfield is greedy. He’s selfish. And he’s always looking out for Number One.”

“Is there a sense in which a character with those qualities could be a messenger for you?”

She thought about it for a bit. Then slowly her head swiveled to contemplate the buffet, once heavy laden but now thinning fast. She said, “You mean it would be okay for me to jump the line and grab a slice of chocolate cake from the buffet while there’s still some left?”

“Garfield would say, Absolutely!”

A mischievous smile played with her lips. When it reached her eyes, she looked like a playful eight-year-old girl. She raced to the buffet and got the last piece of chocolate cake.

And left me thinking about the brilliance with which our dream guides – or our dream producers – pick exactly the right costumes and scripts to get what we need to know through to us, where we live. The message carried by Garfield was: Lighten up. Know that it’s okay to look out for yourself as well as others.

The dream guide might say, with Horace, “May not truth in laughing guise be dressed?”