What is a Dream?

Is a dream a desire? A fear? Is it mysticism?

Is it someone communicating with you? Is it a message from God? The Holy Spirit guiding you?

Knowing the answers to these questions might help us analyze our dreams. Without answers, we can only speculate about their meaning or remember them. I will choose the later.

I am sitting in a strange living room. Actually, it resembles the living room I have imagined my Great Grandparents Murray having. But why would a dream about their house, a place I have never been? At first, I am sitting on a hard chair around a table in the middle of the room. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, I move to a soft chair behind me, a recliner, I think. Two people are sitting on the couch to my left, and I think a TV is playing across the room from them.

Then one of them gets up, leaves the room, and then returns. When he returns, he walks over to me, faces me, and I recognize him. In my awake state, I acknowledge he was someone I have not seen in 24 years. His presence is so real that, in my sleeping state, I try to get up out of my soft chair to greet him, but my body will not move. It is asleep. My failure wakes me, and the image is gone, but the memory of this brief dream is as fresh as if it had really happened; happening just before I awoke. In the moment of my dream when I saw him, his face was so real, yet once I awoke, I could not remember the face in the same detail and freshness that I saw it in the dream. Now, writing this, I am still unable to see that face in the kind of detail that made it appear so real, so alive in that moment.

Awakened by God

"Why did Jesus spend his last night on earth teaching his disciples to wash feet and share supper?" (taken from An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor).

Taylor answers her question with, . . . "he gave them . . . specific ways of being together in their bodies . . . that would go on teaching them what they needed to know when he was no longer around to teach them himself." (p. 43)

How long I wandered this earth seeing it as trees and grass and buildings and people and all of the objects that make up our physical world. How long I lived among other people, learning what was written in books and what was told to me, rules, expectations, even stories of beauty and kindness and justice. But like the physical world, they simply existed, there for me to appreciate or not.

Like the two men traveling to Emmaus, I was blind to the real world that existed in, with, and under the physical world. I saw trees, but failed to see God's presence in them. I saw marvelous, towering buildings and lowly shacks that appeared unable to adequately house a human being, but I didn't see the hand of God at work in either of them. I saw people. I even loved people, at least some of them, but I when I looked at their faces, I saw analysis and judgement, not God.

After 55 years of seeing a world built of products such as cardboard and concrete and viewing faces as cells that were either poorly or exquisitely formed, a Pastor's invitation to the communion table shed for me a light as glorious as the one I imagined accompanied Jesus' ascension. In the story, two men on the road to Emmaus are joined by a stranger who seems unaware of the recent death of Jesus, but is able to recount the Bible's stories of all that led to that event. At Emmaus, they invite the stranger to share their bread before he travels on. At the moment when Jesus breaks the bread, the men awaken to the joyous reality that this stranger is Jesus.

This meeting of Jesus, the stranger, and the two from Emmaus was no accident: It was a lesson for all of us that Jesus, even when we don't recognize him, is here with us. He is here in the breaking of bread, in the building of towering concrete office buildings and in the building of cardboard shelters for people without homes. He is here in the trees majestically swaying above our heads, and in the homely weed trying to grow through a small hole along the dirty asphalt highway. He is here when our bodies are young and strong and healthy and when our bodies are deformed, diseased or withering. He is the baby born in a cave housing livestock, and he is every face we meet along our "roads to Emmaus."

We can't draw a line between what exists or lives on this earth and God, because God is here, everywhere, in all things and in all people. Asleep, we fail to see Him. Awakened by God, listening TO God, hearing with heart and soul, we see God everywhere. And seeing God in everything and in everyone is how we apply Jesus' final lesson to the disciples: Go out in God's world and break bread with each other knowing Jesus is sharing it too. Reach out and wash each other's feet as if you are washing the feet of Jesus, because you are.

My Garden

My Garden: A Symbol of My Life

My garden is nearly finished. Only a few adjustments are needed, but already I can visualize my stroll through this nine by 20 foot paradise. It is a Feng Shui design meant to draw people in, make them feel comfortable with just the right amount of inspiration, invigoration, and relaxation.

I enter the garden from the west where a Lemon Drop Lantana reminds me of the carefree days of childhood. I follow the flagstone path as it curves southward where my small horizon is filled with shades of red. Muhly grass flutters its purpley feathers in the breeze, and the flowers of the Hot Lips Salvia purse their petals for each hummingbird that arrives. The Agave stands majestic and confident as if it claims the title of Garden Magistrate, and behind it a Firebush heats up this corner that represents my attitude about wealth.

The flagstones keep me a safe distance from the Agave with its sharp-as-a-knife leaf tips and the excessive invigoration that all that red can bring. At my feet, the White Trailing Lantana provide refreshing relief from the energy of the south, and the brass reindeer and sleigh recall Christmas. The white flowers of the lantana provide the snow, and my memories recall the joy of one of my favorite times of the year.

My virtual journey continues, as the reds cool to the copper of a Dwarf Copper Plant and the abundant greens of a Red Yucca, a Turks Cap, and a Shrimp Plant. The scattering of flowers in shades of red make the butterflies and hummingbirds my long-term guests, but it is the green of these plants on the east side of the garden that speak the loudest to me. They represent my attitude toward family, and green says "stability."

Set into this "family" environment is my white perching rock, and I stop for a moment of peace and meditation. Nearby, I hear the baritone melody of wind chimes and watch a butterfly enjoy cool repose on a rock in the Butterfly Bath. Soon my virtual journey will end, but for now, I find peace in the Indigo Salvia facing me from the north and the carpet of Asian Jasmine covering the center of the garden. A glimpse of the New Yellow Trailing Lantana and the Whirling Butterflies (Guara Plant) in the northwest corner bring me a moment of humor.

I have found excitement, security, and peace with joy and humor acting as bookends to my journey. My flagstone path has ended, and I must find an exit. There, below my feet is the rockbed of a virtual dried up creek, and it leads me to the "shore," the driveway to my front door.

My garden is all that I had hoped it would be: A symbol of my life: Family first, then friends, companions, relationships filled with joy and humor, a sense of moderation when it comes to wealth and fame, and God's peace that surpasses all understanding filling every aspect of my life. In the virtual world, we experience the paradise we would like to have in the real world.

My God, Why Have I Forsaken You?

Psalm 22 says, “My God, my God, why have you deserted me?” A question I can’t ask, because more often than not, it seems to me to be the other way around: My God, my God, why have I deserted you? Each morning, I decide to spend more time with God, listening for Him, talking with Him, reading and studying to become wiser in how to trust him, how to be merciful to all others, and, most of all, how to have a pure heart.
Each evening, I close my final prayer promising to move closer to God the next day, but the next day is no different from the previous. I hurriedly dress for my morning walk, squeeze a little gardening in between breakfast and morning chores or errands. In no time, lunch needs to be spread on the table, and a kitchen must be cleaned from morning meals and dirtied in preparation for the evening meal.
The afternoon? I must answer e-mail where I find temptations to work on my family history, to explore the latest Gaither or Ernie Haase music, or meet obligations for Covenant’s archives or one of my groups. If none of these begs my attention, certainly family and daily responsibilities do. In any case, time to read, meditate, or listen for God rarely arrives. So, rather than me, it must be God who is saying, “I call all day, but you never answer.”
The Sabbath, that day to keep Holy and Wholly for “Space with God,” is no different. Even now, I write, but it is frustration writing, not meditative writing. I want more music, singing praises to God, but I fear embarrassment if I play or sing alone, and I don’t find running away to be an appealing alternative.
Time WITH God, Space FOR God, both are more elusive than love. Are “God” and “Love” synonymous?

God Give This Child a Good Heart

This is one of my new favorite songs, written by Ernie Haass of Ernie Haass and Signature Sound, a quartet of male gospel singers, but they are different. Their CD "Dream On" has a tune that could have been part of the

I disappoint myself when I don't walk, if not in the morning, at least sometime during the day. It's so odd; I love walking in the morning, feeling the breeze, listening to the birds welcome the first light and their first meal of the day. I love breathing the fresh air and being alone in the world, and I love saying "good morning, God." It's like being on a first-name basis with someone you have always admired. . . no, it's not LIKE that; it IS THAT! And I'm inclined to think that is precisely the relationship God would like to have with each of us. So I smile when I greet God in such a familiar way.

There is no other time of the day, or the week, when I connect with God like that. Prayer times aren't the same. Meditation time isn't the same. Calling on God because of a need or a problem, or to seek forgiveness are nothing like that morning greeting. Even calling on God just because of a desire to call on God isn't the same at any other time of the day. There is something special about saying, "Good morning, God." I wonder what it is.

In God's Image

I just read a quotation from the July 11 sermon in my Texas church. The following words reminded me of my reactions to a banner that has been designed and is being made to hang in a church. First the (edited) quotation; then my thoughts about the banner I will be seeing soon:

"Churches must stop thinking about everybody primarily in terms of in or out . . . Besides the fact that these terms are offensive . . ., they work against Jesus' teachings about how we are to treat each other . . . We are all created in the image of God. . ."

When I read that this banner in celebration of diversity would have a square to represent all categories of people, I read the list of categories and immediately felt left out, because I didn't identify with any of the categories. I'm not African-American, Asian-American, young, old, gay, lesbian . . . and, frankly, I don't remember the rest of the categories. When I fill out forms, I am required to enter my age; is it middle age? not really. I'm required to enter my ethnicity, and I check "caucasian," but only because it's the closest thing in the list to what I am, but I NEVER think of myself as a caucasian. There simply was no category to represent me. Then I recall an incident that happened shortly after I started working for the Dept. of Public Instruction:

Someone said to me, "I suppose there are a lot of African Americans working there." I stopped to think. The truth? I thought about this absolutely handsome man I often saw in the building -- distinguished with very dark skin. Maybe he was African American, and I was sure, at the time, that there were people of many different ethnicities and skin colors working at DPI, but I could not answer the question I was asked, except to say, "well, I'm sure there are." The next morning that I reported to work, my secretary met me in my cubicle, as she did every morning to share and inquire regarding family and friend events of the evening/weekend and current events at work. Talking with her, I suddenly realized, "My secretary is African American." I'm sure she and I had discussed issues related to skin color or ethnicity, but it never occurred to me to "pigeon-hole" her.

I don't want to pigeon-hole anyone, nor do I want to be pigeon-holed. Do you want to categorize me? Okay: I'm Danish and German and English and Ojibwe with a touch of Scotch Irish, but my English ancestors included Vikings who married the French, and were my Mediterranean/Middle East ancestors Roman? Greek? Israelite? Other? I am a female, an adult, a mother, a grandmother. My eyes are blue, my skin olive. I'm Protestant and American.

I could list so many more categories. Do you want to pigeon-hole me? As much as I love being a mother and grandmother, those pigeon-holes alone leave me insulted for loss of all of the other things I am that I care about. Don't pigeon-hole me, and don't ask me to support the act of pigeon-holing anyone else either.

We all are made in God's image. Maybe when we look at each other, we should see God!

Why "My Family Journal"

I decided to start this Blog as my way of keeping what matters most to me as near to me as possible without imposing on others. Hence "My Family Journal." Here I will communicate with my family whenever I would like to, but not impose my time nor my writing on them. Yes, it is a journal, but unlike the journals that sit on my book shelves, this journal could be read by interested family members. With that in mind, I will share my thoughts, not necessarily my deepest thoughts, but those thoughts that I might share with family members if such things as boredom and bores, limited time, and judgemental emotions didn't exist.

So here, family, is my journal. I can't predict what it will contain. If history truly repeats itself, then this journal (like so many others) is likely to be short on content, and even shorter on substance. But I hope it meets my need to think about my family and communicate with them without imposing on them.