At the conclusion of the service in a large open church sanctuary, Darchelle and I stand up in the pew with her parents. We are all dressed in dark brown and everyone else in the church is likewise dressed either in Army green or in brown. As Darchelle and I walk out of the sanctuary I remark "Khaki and brown, khaki and brown." Out in the foyer, we search for a way to get upstairs to the balcony; I do not recall why. We climb a set of stairs but it leads to someone's private apartment decorated mostly in pink. a faucet has been left running in the kitchen sink but we do not go into the apartment to turn it off. Returning to the foyer, we try another stairway but it ends halfway up to another door. The base of the door is about at the level of our chins. Returning again to the foyer, we run into Alicia who is heading into the sanctuary. She is excited and happy about something but we do not talk with her about it.

Talking this dream over with Darchelle helped me develop an understanding of it even though I cannot remember all of the details. I have recently found myself from time to time considering the question of whether or not God exists as a reality apart from human imagination - so what else is new? This dream is apparently mulling over the same question.
The setting is clearly a church; Darchelle's parents and Alicia both symbolize being a Christian. Everyone in the congregation is dressed either in green or brown, both colors I associate with military uniforms. The military reference is not to the idea of the church as the army of God but rather to the army as a highly structured organization in which the individual must conform to a predefined set of beliefs and behaviors. Other possible allusions of the colors brown and green in the dream are to the two shirts which I wear most frequently, and to the Christian categorization of people as either saints or sinners, saved or lost.
Going upstairs to the balcony is probably a reference to going to heaven, and in the dream, that destination is not attainable, either because there is no way to get there or because it does not exist. The apartment to which the first stairway leads is not the place Darchelle and I were seeking. Clues to its significance include the color pink, which in my dreams often seems to be a reference to my ex-wife Susan, and the faucet left running, which I associate with Darchelle. Both relationships have bound me to Christianity though in very different ways. It may also be that the apartment with its references to my marriages alludes to the idea that God or heaven is to be found in the context of intimate relationships. The second stairway which fails to give access to the door upstairs is likely a commentary on the shortcomings of Christianity as a vehicle for achieving ideals, heaven among them.
In contrast to the rest of the dream, which offers little indication that God exists or can be found through Christianity, Alicia is enthusiastic and excited as she heads into the sanctuary, a symbol of the possibility that despite the evidence to the contrary, God may be real. The question remains unresolved, though my absence of strong emotions in the dream may reflect my conviction that whatever the answer is, I have little to fear from it.