Journal entry: a dream

A fragment, really.

My brain is always active through the night, and as is true with most people, most of the dreams are forgotten before I awake. The few bits that are left, however, would make for amazing cinematography if they could be captured or reproduced. There is also the matter of multiple layers of meaning hovering around the images and events in the dream, something nearly impossible to capture in few words. With those observations to serve as disclaimers, here’s what I found myself remembering this morning, as the eggs were in the pan:

I am somewhere, in a large building, perhaps to attend a convention or other large gathering. It’s a hotel, I think. I’m many stories up, a dozen or more at least, and appear to be alone in the room when the shaking starts.  After a few moments, it is clear that the whole building is unstable, and is about to come down.  The room begins to rotate around me, furniture sliding, the ceiling soon to be a wall.  It occurs to me that I may only have a few more seconds to live.  It also comes across my mind that the same may be true of friends and loved ones, elsewhere in the same building.  As those few remaining seconds become fewer, in my ongoing conversation with God (online all the time; kind of like broadband) I express these concerns, along with just a hint of curiosity about what, if anything, lies beyond.  There is no memory of anything after that.

As has been the case with other such things, there is no sense of fear, or panic associated here.  Not exactly detachment, either; somewhere in the mix was a complex of concerns about unfinished business elsewhere, whether anyone would ever know my passwords or even what-all I have passwords to, with attendant mild anxiety about those things.  But personal fear?  Not really.  Disappointment at the idea of not getting to do anything else?  Yeah.

Ok, that’s it.  A dream fragment, nothing more.  A snapshot. One person, dealing with the question of mortality and the fragility of personal existence.

Not dead yet

Regular readers (assuming for the moment there are any; kind of like assuming there really are unicorns, I know) of this blog will have noticed that my output/production has slowed to a mere trickle or less in recent months.  Not to worry, I have not met with any disasters or any such thing.  It’s just one of those seasons of life where there is more absorbing going on.  I continue to follow current events with keen interest, devote myself to the ongoing task of the interpretation of ancient texts in the context of modern situations, and engage in the daily tasks of visiting the sick, encouraging the downhearted, interfering in local politics, and pretending that I’m several decades younger than the calendar would allow.  So:  an interesting observation, coming right up.

For reasons completely mystifying to me, I find that as an individual human being, I, the writer of this blog, am, on the whole, more happy than not.  This is an astonishing revelation, and it runs counter to the assumptions under which I have operated for a long time.  A colleague recently made this observation to me, though, and I could not easily refute him:  that I come across as one who operates from a center of deep contentment.   I laughed (a deeply contented belly laugh) when I heard that.  It’s true that all the things that I think should worry me (household bills, the state of my own and others’ health, how well various groups and organizations are doing, the economy, the environment, local politics, international politics, whether I can really get something worthwhile accomplished before I die, and on and on) don’t actually worry me as much as some part of me thinks they should — and I’m not even all that worried about this lack of worry.  Something has changed, some corner has been turned within me.

I am content, but I am not satisfied.  I cannot be satisfied while others are hungry, in danger, depressed, discouraged, at risk.  So today, for example, in one hour I will be at a local community center where groups of citizens will come together to try to match  needs and resources with regard to adequate housing.  Later, I’ll be on hand to rejoice with a neighbor’s family as they celebrate a high school graduation.  Tomorrow, I’ll think out loud in the presence of others concerning the vision of Isaiah the prophet, and how in a time of change and turmoil (and what time is not?) he had a glimpse of holiness and renewed and deepened his own sense of his place in unfolding history.  It is to be hoped that this great vision will be renewed in someone at our own moment in unfolding history.  I am content, not satisfied, but hopeful and somehow confident.

Could we be entering the generation where the word of God is no longer twisted to serve the interests of nations and individual peoples, at the expense of others, but in which the truth that “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein” (Psalm 24:1) is indeed recognized and followed up with “He makes wars to cease to the ends of the earth” (Psalm 46:9)?

The ninteenth century saw the end of the institution of slavery as an accepted part of the normal life of nations, for the first time in the history of the planet.  I am now praying that something comparable will happen in the twenty-first century with regard to the institution of warfare.  There is more biblical foundation for the latter than for the former.

Content, yes, for myself; but for this old world there’s a lot of work to do.  I’ll do it online, on the ground, and in the secret place of prayer.  I am confident that I won’t be the only one.

Observation

Seen on the wall of a Sunday School classroom

Whaddya Know….

….. one’s past never really leaves one behind.  Seems some work I did with a few friends back in the day has found its own life here on the Inter-Tubes.    And even with a social networking presence, yet.  There you can find some of the very few extant pictures of yours truly with real hair.

This link belongs here on The Search for Integrity particularly because of an early working definition for integrity (developed by me for my own use) as follows:  Integrity is letting all the different parts of your life acknowledge one another.

Magic mushroom?

Magic Mushroom?

Magic Mushroom?

Believe it or not, I found this thing growing in my yard….On my birthday.

Edit:  Three days later, it’s still there….

Still magical….

portrait

Rev. Bob Buehler

Graduations

Just over a week ago, we gathered to celebrate the memory of a 90-year-old matriarch who had gone to her rest.

This week, newsman and political junkie par excellence, Tim Russert, departed this life without warning. Active, happy, and about my age.

Yesterday I attended a graduation party for a young man I have known since he was six.

Nearby sat a young woman, due to give birth this month.

Next week week is the fortieth reunion of my own high school class. Who’d have imagined that the likes of me would live to see such a thing?

Life has its stages, and every one is awesome in its importance.

I Take This Personally

To Another Poet

Write. Just write. Write your heart, write your soul. Write volumes and reams and write without scissors. Write blindly, without looking. Write what you feel, write what you know. And if you feel nothing, if you know nothing, then write what you see. Write, write, if you must, about me. Write, write, write. Write until you drop. Next week you can edit. Don’t stop.

~XineAnn

 

I don’t know if this online friend had me in mind, or someone else —most likely someone else, she has many online friends, and not a few of them write poetry — but since she posted it in a place that she knows I read, I’ll take it as targeted in part, at least, to me. In any case, it’s good advice, and suggests something of the passion that is required for someone to undertake the foolish quest of turning the soul inside out, to reveal one’s heart to a cold and mostly unlistening world, or, more significantly, perhaps, to oneself.

Spiritual amphibians

About a year and a half ago, I stood at the graveside of a near relative and tried to provide some inspired words of comfort for the gathered family and friends. At such a moment, short on sleep and feeling quite vulnerable, it pays to look to Divine inspiration rather than one’s own genius (although anyone who has admired the works of William Blake might well argue that the two are indistinguishable: a discussion for another day). Be that as it may, one of those curious things that happen from time to time occurred on this occasion also. As I spoke, groping for words, what seemed an apt image appeared before my consciousness, and without any time to analyze or filter it out, I just let the words come. I hope my readers will not be offended at the result, in which I compare the likes of you and me to, well, frogs.

What I heard myself say was that we as humans are a sort of spiritual amphibian, belonging both to time and to eternity, in more traditional terms to earth and heaven, but because of that, exclusively to neither. It is that image that I’d like to expand upon for a moment or two here. Call it a parable, or an imaginative metaphor. Let’s see where it takes us.

We live in time, and we are destined to live in eternity.

Dreaming?

Disney Magic   Originally uploaded by therev3r.

Look…

Some people think I live in fantasyland…. but I just visited it for the first time this week.