An autumn thought. . .

As I look out my window this morning and see evidence of yet another birth of autumn here in French Woods, once again, I cannot fathom the intricacies of this world that God has created!  

Music of my heart. . .

...listening to Kevin Kern piano on Pandora radio along with a little James Todd cello, while noticing how quiet and still the Hobbit Hole is there beside the orchard, just outside my window. Suddenly, I am missing Bob with brand new disbelief and my heart has become sodden with the heaviness of grief. The music probes until it finds my soul, then wraps around the intimacies of my heart, lifting them out from where they are hidden.  "Why do I do this to myself?" I have to wonder. Surely, if not for the music I have chosen, I would be distracted by the day’s tasks at hand and perhaps preoccupied with thoughts less intense.  My spirit would be ‘safe.’  To answer my own question, I think it’s a good idea, and a healthy one, to venture away from those emotional ‘safety zones,’ occasionally.  I’m not saying I intend to ‘wear my heart on my sleeve,’ constantly or that I expect my heartaches to prevent my journey from moving forward.  I’m saying that there are times (and I know there will always be) when I need to ‘visit’ that hiding place, briefly…but it is not where I will choose to ‘live.’

 By the grace of God, I have learned to choose joy, not just in the ‘peaks’ of my life when it is easy to do so, but in the ‘valleys,’ too!

……thankful

It was no Wonderland. . .

I had a rather disturbing dream last night.  Lately, I seem to be having them most nights, one right after the other.  This one woke me quite abruptly and I found myself deeply enmeshed in a grief-stricken panic attack.  I may have been shouting out loud, I don’t know.  The cat merely glared at me and didn’t say.   In the dream, it was night time and I was aboard one of two school buses that were getting ready to pull away from the front of a school in a neighboring town; which in this case, was an exact replica of HCS.  (It was Walton, specifically, although I can’t fathom why or how I know this since there were no other landmarks in my dream.)  The time period was the present.  The bus was full of people but I presume their presence was unrelated to my dream since they were silent and motionless and their identities were blotted into obscurity by the darkness.  I, on the other hand, was a ranting, raving, screaming lunatic!  (Why does that remind me of a Billy Joel song?  “…it just may be a lunatic you’re lookin’ for…”   No matter!  Billy Joel was not in my dream.)  Without warning, the bus revved its motor and began pulling away from the school.  “Wait!” I said to the driver.  “I have to get my things!”  He just kept driving.  “Please!” I pleaded, but there was still no response.  I began to panic.  I could see my personal items on the outside front steps…my purse, my music, my open violin case…and it was beginning to rain!  I could feel my heart filling with anguish as I sobbed and, once again, I begged the driver to stop.  His featureless, robotic response was, “Once the bus is moving, I’m not allowed to stop,” and he drove on.   My ‘poor spell’ escalated to a magnitude of new height……and that’s when I woke up.

Dreams, and the (debatable) significance they hold, have always captivated me.  Even more so due to the fact that I seem to remember mine more often than not and carry them with me for a time.  I used to simply enjoy the challenge of making the obvious connections between their nonsensical surface and reality.  For instance:  school bus = school is starting; Walton = I’ve recently been to the Fair; purse = I walked out of church without it on Sunday and had to go back to retrieve it; and, of course, violin = heart, which has been broken.  Now, although I do not claim to understand the process, I’ve come to appreciate the infinite depth of dreams and their considerably significant role in the well being of our emotional mentality.

From a bit of a more pragmatic side:  Why did I leave my most precious possessions unattended…outside…on a set of stone steps…at night…in the rain?  Why was my violin case open? Where had I been?  Why was I on the bus without them?  What the heck was I thinking?!    

It was no Wonderland, there was no Cheshire Cat (just Clementi), and I am not Alice.  However, I do  admire Alice's assertive "POOH!" when she let those cards have it with a good swift kick.