more on bowl of tears

All those tired of hearing about my dreams, please raise your hand.Ah, I see.But this is too good not to share, so we are back to the dream of Christ's tears.If you will recall, the story started with the waiting for the basketball player, Jackson Crabtree.(?)His arrival with bloody face and how he had just had the best game of his life and was now at the stadium to sing praise hymns.

The story unaccountably switched to the young priest with the bowl of shimmering tears and how I understood the why of the tears of Christ; how I was moved.I am here to report that I was wrong.About the unaccountable part of the switch.The dream/story/revelation was of whole cloth woven of fine threads whose colors were muted and not vivid at once. It was only in rereading my journal notes that I saw it.And all I could do was humbly say:"Thank you."

I want you to notice the name of the "player".A name from out of the blue of dreamland, or is it.Notice the initials.J.C.This long awaited player had a bloody face and he had just played the greatest game of his life.He was filled with joy and ready to praise.He was made for basketball, this Jackson.He gave it his all and practised 'til his fingers bled. Who is this player? His greatest test and game came during Passion week in a back water of the world.What we see as scourging, blood and the cross was the fulfillment of his mission.His assent to his mission brought this greatest of sacrifice and greatest glory.And he was ready to sing.

Perhaps the tears in the bowl are from this as well."You are missing the chance to do the father's perfect will and you will never know the satisfaction and joy of that."

look for Me today

To say that Will was extremely verbose would not do him justice.Chatty, talkative; you get the idea.We met Will on the Camino in Spain in 2013.He  is  tall, good-looking and a fit 80 year old.His hiking companions told us that Bill's wife had died the year before thus his need to talk.If you were near him on the trail, you heard his voice.

That day on the trail was not a good place for me.It was Sunday and my son's 41st birthday.There was no way to call him, to hear his voice and I wore sadness like a thin veil along the miles.

Kevin is my second son and from the delivery to this minute, he has been a source of pride and happiness for all of us.A happy baby, an achieving
teen-ager and a good man.I don't know where his sterling character comes from but I can guarantee that he never bullied in high school.That would be the opposite of who he is.

That misty Sunday, we arrived in the town Melide in time for Mass in a small grey stone church that was on the path.As we were leaving, in my heart, I heard these words,"look for Me today."

We wandered the town, found a room and later at dinner, looked up to see Bill enter the dining room alone.I confess that my first impulse was to turn my head, but my husband signalled for him to join us.He sat and the conversation began.Somewhere in there, I mentioned that it was my son's birthday.Then I told about the time that Kevin moved to Boulder ,Colorado to train for a spot on the Olympic team in running.And how, none of his family, including his sorry mother, called him on that lonely day in the Rocky Mountains.With that, the dam burst, the waters having built throughout the day and sobbing, I left the room.

This is the miracle: as I told my tale, dear, white haired, concerned Will  listened with deep compassion.I needed to share my love for my son and he listened.Bill, you were Christ to me and I will never forget you.

the dried weed and the marigold

Yesterday, on Facebook, a friend tagged me and asked that I post 3 things I am thankful for and to do it for several days.This must have been what triggered last night's dream.So vivid,so colorful.

I was with a group travelling to the beach and we were strangers.We were being challenged to tell something about ourselves and people were stumbling badly in the effort.I started to make a flower wreath of a coat hangar with clothespins holding each flower.When my turn came, I would show my wreath and tell the assembly the message of the colors.

The first was my, beloved since childhood, yellow marigold.Yellow is light, a hand going into the green lake water to save a child who knew the sun direction was the way to go.It is the beginning of spring, the wind blown bright umbrella on a rainy day in Paris.It is the faces of Spanish sunflowers as they watch the sun move through the sky.The tall swamp daisies that are about to bloom in my garden, a gift from my nature wise son who knew how well they would do.Yellow is the canary singing from a white cage in a Long Island church on Holy Thursday.

The yellow light speaks of sparks, insights granted.Christ is all that matters.You are never alone.Even when you thought you weren't loved, you were.No one can tell you what the limits of a seventy year old are. You have an angel and she is your help and guide.Oh, to know these things.

The flower hanging next to it is a pink Vinca and the muse in the dream lets me know that it is the symbol of relationships. She dances, this slight bloom.She brags about four children; each loving, caring and self sufficient.They have strung buds of their own just for my pleasure; red-headed, blond pale, light beige and dark eyed.Perfect.There is family and  friends from childhood, high school, church, work and neighborhood.Each a source of glowing pleasure that completes my life.Priests, teachers, singers, writers, worker bees, encouragers, listeners, sharers and poets.

The one that is starting to droop is the stunning blue, volunteer morning glory.She says hurriedly, "Remember the moments of pause in your life.Not of excitement but of deep reflection and stillness."Times at the monastery, the afternoon sitting by the Hudson River writing in my journal.The hour at Tintern Abbey, pen in hand.The garden in Dingle when the sun shone on Ireland and the bumble bee accompanied my musings.The vision I had listening to Mahler when my beloved rescued me from a terror and my love deepened in a way I considered impossible.Moments astride a fallen log by the Flint River, pen in hand, winter sun waning.

The dream bringer did not leave out what was not wanted.The brittle dried weeds that can cut when held in the wrong way.Challenges, pain, loss.Difficult moments in childhood,the shame and fear.The pregnancy that ended before it had attached well.The hard times in a long marriage.Bad decisions and wanderings far from home.Seeking something to fill the void and finding bondage instead.The muse is telling me to be grateful for these as well and I am.

The rest of the dream saw me laying a green sheet on a small sand dune to claim it for sleep .When I came back someone had laid a blue blanket over it.I took it off with a noisy sigh.I have no idea about that, but I am so grateful for my flowers, real and dreamed.

criminal minds

No, this isn't about serial killers nor is it my usual praise for the glories of nature.I hope you will stay with me.

Many years ago, a wise man who had been in the working world told me about certain employees of his who had criminal minds.I dismissed what he said as his thinking tends to float on the down draft of cynicism.

I see it differently now and it disturbs me.In 1980, I went back to work after a 15 year hiatus.I was grateful to a large telecommunications company for hiring me as I had no idea what my marketable skills and education might be worth. I was part-time, so I had no benefits but this gave me more time with my family.If I had to say what my thinking was when I went to work it went like this; I want to prove myself so I can be full-time, make more money, have health benefits and possibly a career.

The phone center where I worked as a clerk took orders for new service and sold designer phones.Mickey Mouse and the Trim-line phones were favorites.I was in my 30s and there were other clerks, men and women in their 20s.I was very naive and thought that everyone saw things the way I do. I didn't appreciate that their approach was different.From their activities, their thinking must have gone something like this:what can I get out of working here, how can I game the system ?Soon, rumors floated that they were passing the expensive sets out the side door to a cohort who would drive to Georgia Tech and sell the  phones.Orders were changed to provide a friend with deposit free service.I am sure other things happened that I knew nothing about.In their minds, there was no loyalty to a company that provided them with an opportunity,nor any sense of right and wrong.These were bright, attractive people but their thinking undermined them.

Here is a litany of what happened after I left for a full time job at a different location:
-a male clerk fired for altering an order.
-clerk fired for bad mouthing the regional manager over the phone which cause her to have a stroke.
-a male manager fired for bouncing a check on the same company.
-manger fired for stealing money from the teller location entrusted to her.

Think of the money lost from training these people and then the time lost investigating their activities.Where are they now?Did they learn from what happened or did they repeat their behavior?

Is there an answer? Schools are not allowed to teach ethics.Church attendance is down.Who will teach children the value of honesty and gratitude .Their parents? And without the support of the culture, will it fall on deaf ears?

I don't think that we as a nation can go on without addressing the thinking that is ruining lives.The headlines bear witness.

tears in a bowl

Some dreams are so symbolic in my experience as to be almost undecipherable.A friend died and I had a dream that involved a river and a plant with canker.After thinking about it for a wee while, I finally understood how to respond to the family she left behind.Others are pretty clear to me.

Last night, this unfolded.I was waiting with others in a big stadium for the arrival of the very young, tall and very talented basketball player, Jackson Crabtree(?).He finally came with blood on his face and shared with me that he just played the best game of his life.Now, he was to take the stage and sing hymns of praise to God.We all waited for this marvelous event.Something happened next that didn't fit.

I found myself in a small side chapel off the stadium and a reverent young priest with a slight beard appeared with a silver bowl."These are the tears of Christ", he softly announced.I looked in at the shimmering water and was deeply moved because I believed what he said was so.What must this mean ?I understood immediately that the tears came from the many hurts that we inflict on each other.The news is replete with beheadings, murders, violence and the terrible treatment of innocence. But more than this, the tears are for us, the well loved.For the choices we make by settling for less than what we are meant to have.The addictions that fill nothing.The things that bring discontent instead of the joy and peace that is possible.The hand is held out and batted away.Tears fill the bowl.

Perhaps when I choose to watch Forensic Files instead of doing nightly prayer, I am settling for way less than is being offered.I will think of this all day.

I awoke before Jackson got a chance to sing but I am sure it was glorious.

the long and winding road...

I am thinking of another Southern summer that found cooler air blowing on August 15th.This is not such a summer.The mornings are cooler but the heat at noon is oppressive.I watch the trees for the first sign of leaves loosening their hold on branches.All is green and still.

When I was in much cooler Liverpool at the Beatles museum, I paid little attention to the John Lennon information.He was never my favorite of that astoundingly successful group but I caught something on TV last night that grabbed my attention.The show described the hard childhood that Lennon had, an absent father and a partying mother who was killed by an automobile when John was a teen-ager.The narrator said that the absent father haunted Lennon's life and when his first child was born he repeated the pattern and disappeared.

Several pictures of the boy Lennon were shown and what a sweet face.Such innocence.I see him as a teen in his room filled with anger at his mother's inattention and his father's sea sailing absence.And then the stuffing of it deep down with, "I don't care."But the hole is there and he tried many things to fill it.

I think of my favorite Beatle song,the "The Long and Winding Road...."You left me standing here a long, long time ago.... lead me to your door...." I once remarked to a friend that perhaps this was a spiritual song.He laughed but I made it a hymn that speaks to me of being here, when one's heart was made for There.The longing for the Other that is just out of reach.McCartney said it came to him in Scotland and spoke of the unattainable, the door you can never quite reach.That is a deeply spiritual place to me.

Back to the sad childhood.Who can not identify with the loneliness and loss of childhood?Who does not bear the Swiss cheese holes of loss, humiliation, fear left from childhood?And now let's bring Simone Weil into our meditation.She says:"One of the principal truths of Christianity, a truth that goes almost unrecognized today is that looking is what saves us.The bronze serpent was lifted up so that those who lay maimed in the depths of degradation should be saved by looking at it."

What am I looking at? The painful holes or the road that leads me to the Door.And this line makes me misty..."The road will never disappear".Allelulia.

tethered

Something has been bubbling around in my brain and heart that only writing will make clear.

On the last day of travel in England, I was in London on a bus tour.To say I was tired does little justice to the coma I was in but something caught my eye down by the Thames.By the way, this river is everywhere and beautiful as is London.Ancient historical buildings and new strange ones.Clean and neat;I loved it. Anyway, I looked up from my map in time to see a classy looking street sign on a side street near the river.A white sign with black letters said it was John Carpenter St.My camera was away so I have no picture but it might have been the most thrilling thing I saw.He is one of my ancestors.I confirmed it on Google that he was a descendant of a John Carpenter who served in Parliament in 1323 at the age of 20.That person on my father's side is the furthest back I can go with any relation.His descendants left England for the New World in 1638:William Carpenter,his father,wife, 4 children under ten and a 14 year old indentured servant named Thomas Banshott.I love that name.

I try to imagine what that first New England winter must have been like in 1638.What courage to leave the known.It came to me that I may be the first of my family to come back to England.A full circle made.

On the wall of my writing/prayer room is a picture taken in 1904 of a group that includes my grandmother, Johnann Morrison.She is five years old and is holding the hand of her father who is seated.Her face is round and solemn;her hair seems blond with ribbons on either side in the back.Behind her is my great grandmother who is tall with brown hair piled on her head.She has a strong, determined face.I don't remember her but I do recall her daughter, Elizabeth who is to the right of her father in the picture.When we were children, she used to babysit for us and had a strong Scottish accent.Sweet, kind woman.Aunt Libby.

They all left Scotland and came to New York in the steerage section of a ship; my grandmother, a 6 month old baby.Steerage to me sounds like the bottom of a large ship where the rats play in the dirty bilge water.This was in 1898.I can't imagine how long that trip took before they landed in the New York harbor to begin a new life.These were adventurous, hardy folk.

The Famine Irish who came to America had three choices in 1848:starve, be fed by the British if you dropped the filthy Papist faith or leave.The ragged,poor Ambroses left and, listing themselves as farmers on the ship's manifest, came a 'sailing to New York.My great grandmother was Ellen and she was 16 years old when she arrived.I can see her and her 3 siblings huddled around their Mother thinking "what now?"They never got over the loss of home.I know from the songs.

These are my people.I feel them sometimes;this cloud of witnesses,this communion of saints,sinners,drunks,war heroes, abandoned mothers,bigamists, leather workers, telephone operators, installers,  firemen.I pray for them and they care about me.I know this.I have seen them, indistinctly, a line of people praying for my granddaughter, who hung by a thread in her mother's womb.They who handed the baton of the Faith to me for safe keeping.

I know most people haven't the knowledge of their ancestors that I do.I have been blessed with letters, the old Bible, pictures in abundance and have done research to fill in blanks.Their story is my story.Their faces are known to me.I feel hemmed in by this knowing.Tucked in by a warm blanket of family.Where you go and they have to take you in.

I think Nature intended for us to have family for our protection and the continuation of the species.Also, so that we wouldn't feel so alone in this immeasurably vast universe.