One thing I forgot about my dreams....

(You have to read yesterdays post to understand this one.)

In my anxiety dream about the coffee house in nowhere, I actually said to the woman (Mahala??)

 "Of all the Episcopal Churches in all the towns, in all the world, I walked into yours."

Even in dreams, quotes from Casablanca show up.

Anxiety dreams

I had an anxiety dream both last night and the night before.

When I was a student the dreams were usually about being late for a final and not being able to find the classroom, though I knew all the answers, or moving through amber trying to reach the building.

As a priest they have ranged from being chased by a posse of bishops across an open field to beginning a Eucharist for a huge crowd, opening my Book of Common Prayer to discover it is a picture book and everyone gradually leaves because I can't remember the opening acclamation.

The last two nights have been different.

First, let me assure you, my anxiety dreams are rich with symbolism and depth and I ponder them for days, wishing I were in Jungian analysis  again--several sessions for each! Ultimately they are not terrifying, but point me to consider what it is I might be anxious about subconsciously. They never come when I'm consciously anxious, but only to make me ponder and reflect. (Sounds Jungian enough, right?)

Saturday night, I'm traveling in a strange place (It looks like West Virginia) and go into an Episcopal church for Eucharist (I think it's called St. Peter's) and encounter there a woman from my past. Obviously she is someone I had feeling for. She looks a lot like Mahala Holmes. Mahala and I were both counselors in a summer camp when we were juniors in college. She went to Marshall and I went to WVU. She was a lifeguard and I took kids on nature hikes and played softball with them. She was beautiful and unattainable to me.

Anyway, this dream woman and I reunite and she tells me to follow her to her place of work--which is a fancy coffee/desert place in the middle of nowhere. She has to work and I drink coffee and eat a desert she brings me. Finally I must leave and she walks me to the door. Outside, I can't find my car, so I go back in and ask her where it is. "Right in the front lot," she tells me. I go out a different door and the parking lot in that direction is on fire. I circle around the coffee house and can't find my car.

I can't find a way back in and end up near the burning lot again only to realize somehow I've lost my sports coat and my car keys (for the car I can't find!) are in the coat's pocket.

Then I wake up.

Saturday night, I'm at a board meeting of the Mastery Foundation, which I am a member of. There are people there I know and some I don't. It's at the house of one of the board members--a very nice and spacious house. Some of the members are actually from the real Board, some are other people in my life (which confuses me in my dream) and some are total strangers. For some reason, I go for a walk with 'Margaret' (who looks like a much younger version of Margaret Baranoski--a member of St. John's, Waterbury, who I buried years ago).

On our way back from wherever we went, Margaret is hit by what I think is a big, black Landrover. One of the tires comes off the car and I pick it up and carry it into a Post Office (much more like a British Post Office than ours) and get one of the postal workers to help me get it on a table. We open the tire and 'Margaret's' clothes and possessions are in it, but not her body.

I say to the postal worker, "we have to call the police!"

He (who looks like a British actor, maybe a young Michael O'Toole) says to me in a British/Irish accent, "no, lad, you brought this to me, I have to handle it now."

Suddenly I'm back at the house where the meeting is. I find Ann (who is real and the Executive Director of the Foundation) and tell her what has happened. She touches my arm and says (as she has from time to time) "I'm leaving this to you".

I spend the next however long (it seems like an hour) chasing the members of the board around the spacious house trying to get them into the meeting room so I can tell them what has happened.

All to no avail. Like trying to herd cats, they escape me at every doorway. I finally tell our hostess what has happened and say, 'we'll all have to go to the police station in a while'. And she says (I kid you not!) "But there's so much chocolate left!)

I end up in the meeting room in despair with Ann looking at me with her arms crossed and no one coming to my calls.

Then I wake up.

I'll ponder these for weeks. Any Jungian folks out there who have any insights, let me know.

(My unconscious anxiety is probably that we're leaving for Italy June 10th and I hate to travel--I'm a real home-body, truth be known. Or it may be that I'm 69 and was very ill on Saturday--though I slept through it--and I'm having intimations of mortality. I'll be following both those threads and others, I assure you.)

If dreams are 'whispers from God', these were two odd messages! Jung believed dreams were our unconscious seeking to make us more 'whole'. I believe that. I just don't understand it!

Sleep really is the best medicine

I felt a little punk-ish (and I don't mean the rock music) when I went to bed Friday night. I had just finished some Spicy Cajun Trail Mix and I seldom eat anything after 8 pm. But I had no idea what awaited me.

I woke up at 3 am with stomach pain and nausea. Then at 5 am I woke up and rushed to the bathroom. By 7 I was convinced something was badly wrong. I walked the dog, still feeling nauseous but couldn't fix his food because we feed him dry food mixed with stuff we make ground turkey or hamburger with rice, spinach, sweet potato and carrots and I knew I couldn't look at that mixture and remain standing.

So, I went to bed and slept for 4 hours. I still couldn't face food so I slept for another 4 hours. Then I ate a soft boiled egg and slept for 2 hours. And I went to bed at 9 pm and slept until 6:30 am. That's about 19 hours sleep in 24. And when I woke up I felt fine and famished. I ate a big breakfast and went off to church.

I slept right through my stomach bug.

Sleep really is healing.

I'm told that when I was 11 I had mumps and measles at the same time. I was in a darkened room and slept for most of 4 days. That's what I was told. I clearly don't remember because I was asleep....

Only problem with this miracle cure is that the dog stayed in bed with me the whole time except when Bern came to get him to eat or walk. So today, I laid on the bed to read for half-an-hour or so and when I left the dog barked for 5 minutes, ordering me to come back.

Bela doesn't obey much of anything, but if you say 'go to the big bed' he's off up the steps....

Another thing, being abed so much Saturday, my ankles haven't hurt today (they've been bothering me for a month or so). Bern suggested I should spend a day a week in bed with books to help my ankles. It sounds a tad extreme, but, hey, I'm retired. I might just do it....

Critters

We don't live in the country. Cheshire is a pretty dense suburban town. There is a field behind our back yard, but none other in the neighborhood. And people don't have large lots--this part of town was settled before zoning.

But we have lots of critters.

Bern saw a squirrel the other day in the yard she said 'was a big as a spider monkey'. I rather doubt that, but there are some big squirrels and lots of young ones around.

We have a colony or two of chipmunks in our yard. Some may be in our basement from time to time but mostly they live in an old wood pile that we haven't used for a few years since we need to reline our kitchen fire place. We sometimes smell a skunk and I've seen a racoon or two.

And there are several bunnies in the immediate area. One quite large.

And then there are the birds--more birds than I ever remember: wrens, swallows, tons of robins, mourning doves, cardinals, sparrows, a cow bird or two, blue jays, chickadees, crows aplenty and a golden hawk that lives in the very top of a tree two lots down and keeps an eye on the field and backyards. You can hear his cry throughout the day. And the occasional hummingbird since we have lots of red flowers.

And ground hogs--I shouldn't forget them--who live behind us and, in the fall, eat the berries just behind our back yard that have fermented and get drunker than skunks! Or, in this case, drunker than a ground hog should get.

I won't even go into the insects and worms and such.

Just a lot of creatures. I even saw what I thought was a coyote in the field behind our house and a red fox from time to time passes through.

Having grown up in a more rural place, I love the critters.

feeling old

I had blood drawn today for two different doctors I have appointments with next week. Seeing doctors makes me feel old.

My joints hurting makes me feel old.

Not remembering the name of plants and people makes me feel old.

Being half-way through a book before I realize I've read it before makes me feel old.

Forgetting what I'm looking for makes me feel old.

But I have found a cure for 'feeling old'--go sit in the blood draw place for a while.

This morning, in the 20 minutes I was there I saw half-a-dozen people who were, no kidding, OLD.

They could hardly walk, had trouble breathing, had to have someone with them to answer questions, seemed not to know where they were.

I can walk, breathe well, answer questions and (usually) know where I am.

So, whenever I start feeling old, I'm going to sneak into Quest Labs for a while, read a book and watch the 'old people'. Then I'll feel young for a while....Until my ankle hurts or can't remember 'gardenia' or my neighbor's kid's name or am searching through the refrigerator for God knows what.

That will tell me this: time for a visit at the blood drawing place...(what's it called again?...oh, yeal, Quest Labs....

almost meaningless theological musings

I had a deep conversation today with the folks I meet with most Tuesdays. Mostly is was my friend, Michael, and me.

Michael was explaining something he'd been told by a priest who works for the Episcopal Church in Connecticut (we used to call it "the Diocese", but don't now). She was talking about sacraments by using and inverted triangle to illustrate her point.

The broad, top line of the inverted triangle, was, she said, 'Baptism'--the primary 'sacrament' and went on to show how the other six 'derive' from baptism.

I sort of lost it at some point, because I don't see it that way at all. Jesus said to his disciples they must 'baptize' and they must 'share bread and wine in his memory and it would be his body and blood'. Sometimes we call Eucharist and Baptism the 'dominical sacraments' (my spell check says "dominical" is misspelled but won't give me an option for it)--it's like "anno dominus" (which my spellcheck doesn't like either but won't respond to my clicks on ABC)...'the year of our Lord'.

Jesus gave us those two sacraments. He never gave us the other five--confirmation, ordination, reconciliation, marriage and unction. Those the church 'made up' out of whole cloth.

I don't mind that. I am very 'low church' and informal in liturgical practice, but I have a very 'high' view of the Sacraments. Which means, I believe they mean something and aren't just 'symbols', as Protestants believe. I think sacraments 'matter' in a real way. Like in life.

The 7 are all 'real' to me. But Baptism and Eucharist are the primary ones from which the others flow.

All this is because I think the rule about 'being baptized' to receive communion is non-sense. To my understanding, only the disciples of Jesus who were previously followers of John the Baptist would have been 'baptized' at the Last Supper.

If the 'font' can lead to the Table, then the Table can lead to the 'font'.

I've known dozens of people who received communion before they were baptized and because 'the Body and Blood' really mean something, they came to ask for baptism.

That simple. The Spirit can lead both ways.

That's all I'm trying to say.

(I once gave communion to a man in Charleston, West Virginia who wore a turban and had a red dot on his head. I never saw him before or after. He just showed up after the service began, received communion and left before the recessional.

Several people asked me if I knew he was a Christian (baptized) or not. I told them it didn't matter. "If God really doesn't want unbaptized people receiving communion God can strike me dead or strike them dead. Whichever. But if they come to the Table and reach out their hands I cannot, cannot deny them Christ's Body."

The Table belongs to God, not to the Church.

This was all almost meaningless theological musings...but not to me!!!

read this book at your own risk

I just finished Joyce Carrol Oats' novel The Man with no Shadow.

Lordy, Lordy, it shook me up!

It's about an amnesiac and the psycho-neurologist who studies him for three decades.

Halfway through I started thinking I had amnesia. By the end I was broken hearted.

It is quite a trip. But not for the faint of heart.

Risk it if you want....

Don't blame me if you do.....