Dreaming With My Dad

Since my father died he has appeared in my dreams several times. There's nothing unusual about his appearance. He's just there. In last night's dream I seemed to be in New York City although I do not remember any NYC landmarks being obvious to me and my sister, who lives in NYC, wasn't in the dream. There were other people with me but now I can't remember who they were. At some point in the dream there was Dad for no particular reason. I think we were in an Italian restaurant and he was eating a meatball hoagie. I'm not sure if he even liked meatball hoagies. As quickly as he appeared, he was gone. This is Dad's second or third appearance in one of my dreams since his death. I don't know what any of this means. I don't recall Dad speaking to me in any of the dreams. He just makes quiet appearances and then he disappears. I know that dreams often, if not always, have meaning. I can only recall a series of dreams once in my life that had obvious meaning for me. Many years ago, at a time when I felt trapped in my life, I routinely had dreams where I was always in buildings that seemed to have no exits. In the dreams I was always walking up and down hallways looking for an exit that I never found. Most of my dreams don't have clear meaning for me. I never have nightmares but will occasionally have a dream that wakes me with a feeling of uneasiness. More often than not my dreams are a strange collection of people from my life often mixed with celebrities in some kind of circumstance that doesn't make any sense. When I awaken few dreams stay with me. Most are quickly forgotten. Anyway, Dad, it's been nice to see you again. Stop by my dreams anytime. I hope you are well.

Nick's Birthday/Chloe Spends The Night

Last week my son, Nick, turned 27 years old. This week he is home for spring break so last night we had a family birthday celebration at Chili's restaurant. We had a great meal and a good time. Since it was also a Saturday night I was followed home by a three foot tall mutchkin. In a few months Chloe will be five years old! I can hardly believe it! In the fall she will start kindergarten. Whenever Chloe spends the night it is equivalent to a workout at the gym for me. In a day or two I will have sore muscles from being ridden like a horse, from carrying her around on my shoulders, and from holding her hands while she walks up my body and stands on my head. This morning, after watching the "Beverly Hills Chihuahua", she sat on my lap facing me. She held my hands and laid backwards with her head touching the floor. We talked about how the world looks different when it is upside down and how the floor becomes the ceiling and the ceiling becomes the floor. Sometimes with Chloe I not only get a physical workout, I also experience an intellectual workout that stretches my mind in completely new directions.

Now it is Sunday afternoon and I am in my room. Outside the sky is overcast and there is a blustery wind. A new cold front is blowing in and the beautiful weekend we've had this weekend will temporarily leave us as the rains approach. The bright side of this is that a rainy afternoon makes for wonderful napping.

Jamming With Joe Bonamassa

First of all, it is a glorious morning. I am sitting here with my window open. A wonderful breeze is blowing in. Outside it is sunny and 68 degrees. By the end of the day it will probably be 10 degrees warmer. Soon I will be complaining about how hot I am.

Last night I attended a magnificent musical performance by Joe Bonamassa. Joe is a white, blues/rock singer and guitarist of enormous skill and virtuosity. Simply put, he was smoking hot. I attended with my usual group of fellow music lovers. The show was in an intimate setting called the Bomhard Theater. The Bomhard is a small theater within the larger Kentucky Center for the Arts. If you love blues and rock and roll I encourage you to see Joe if you have the opportunity. At the very least I highly recommend his CD entitled "Live from nowhere in particular". It's a very good representation of what I saw last night.

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My son, Nick, is home from the seminary for spring break. Last week was his 27th birthday. This evening we will meet up with my other son, his wife, and Chloe for a birthday dinner. Guess who will be coming home with Pa Paw?

The Care And Feeding Of The Introvert In Your Life

More than once I have shared that I am an off the chart introvert. Introverts are often misunderstood. I am not a shy person. In fact, anyone who knows me would probably tell you I am a very friendly person. I like other people. However, as an introvert I must be honest and say that other people simply wear me out. The main focus of my job is interaction with other people. By the end of the workday I feel like all the blood has been sucked out of my body. In order to be able to recover from my interactions with others, even if they are pleasant, I simply must have personal and solitary time. If I don't have this time alone I can be downright hostile. I have determined that I need about two hours a night of solitude where I don't have to deal with anyone, even my wife. In this personal time I might nap, read the newspaper or a book, review emails, write on this blog, or simply listen to music. Sometimes I do all of this in a continuous flow. Each day I look forward to this time. Later in the evening when I have recovered from the demands of the day, I usually join my wife and we watch a movie or favorite television shows. Some nights, however, I hit the jackpot and I have an entire evening of solitude.

This evening I actually received an excellent meditation along these lines from the folks at DailyOm.Com. This is a nice site if you want to sign up for their meditations. Here's the one I received tonight.

Sustenance for the Soul
Taking Time for Yourself
Modern life compels us to rush. Because we feel pressured to make the most of our time each day, the activities that sustain us, rejuvenate us, and help us evolve are often the first to be sacrificed when we are in a hurry or faced with a new obligation. It is important we remember that there is more to life than achieving success, making money, and even caring for others. Your spiritual needs should occupy an important spot on your list of priorities. Each task you undertake and each relationship you nurture draws from the wellspring of your spiritual vitality. Taking the time to engage in spiritually fulfilling activities replenishes that well and readies you to face another day. Making time for the activities that contribute to your spiritual growth has little to do with being selfish and everything to do with your well-being. Regularly taking the time to focus on your soul’s needs ensures that you are able to nurture yourself, spend time with your thoughts, experience tranquility, and expand your spiritual boundaries.It is easy to avoid using our free moments for spiritual enrichment. There is always something seemingly more pressing that needs to be done. Many people feel guilty when they use their free time to engage in pursuits where they are focusing on themselves because they feel as if they are neglecting their family or their work. To make time for yourself, it may be necessary to say no to people’s requests or refuse to take on extra responsibilities. Scheduling fifteen or thirty minutes of time each day for your spiritual needs can make you feel tranquil, give you more energy and allows you to feel more in touch with the universe. Writing in a journal, meditating, studying the words of wise women and men, and engaging in other spiritual practices can help you make the most of this time.Making time to nurture your spirit may require that you sacrifice other, less vital activities. The more time you commit to soul-nurturing activities, the happier and more relaxed you will become. The time you devote to enriching your spirit will rejuvenate you and help you create a more restful life.

Spiritual Practices

Today was a beautiful, sunny day with temperatures in the 50's. Unfortunately I was not able to enjoy it until the end of my work day when I walked from my office through the park to the parking garage. Now I am sitting here at my little desk. I just brewed some decaf coffee. I live in the illusion that it will keep me awake until bedtime without actually keeping me up. It's a Zen thing. Don't try to understand it.

Today I had some email exchanges with a friend about the value of spiritual practices. What are spiritual practices? Basically, the common understanding is that they are anything you do to keep your spiritual awareness sharpened the way working out at the gym or jogging keeps your body in shape.

Let me come out of the closet. No, I am not gay. What I am is lazy and undisciplined. I sometimes justify my lack of discipline in regard to spiritual practices by pretending that I don't need them. Today I told my friend that I considered these practices to be like training wheels on a bicycle. You use them when you are learning to ride a bike so that you don't lose your balance and crash. Once you learn how to keep your balance and ride somewhat effortlessly, you no longer need the training wheels. Perhaps arrogantly, I suggested that being spiritual and having a contemplative awareness is something I can do without the training wheels of many spiritual practices. To be more specific, after a lifetime of exposure to many Catholic devotional practices, most of these practices no longer help me to maintain my contemplative balance. What works for me comes so easily that it doesn't seem like a practice at all. For me to get in touch with what Thomas Merton calls "the ground of our being", I simply need to be quiet and be still with nothing to say or do. My prayer is a prayer of being not of doing. Most spiritual practices involve some kind of activity. In a world and a life full of doing, I choose the spiritual practice of not doing anything. Occasionally I will sit on a rock and think. Mostly, though, I just sit.

The Dryer Buzzer Doesn't Always Wake You Up

I have been home most of the evening because my wife had to work late. After a simple dinner of fried corn bread and butter...very healthy...I started reading the Sunday news...yes, I am behind...and doing the laundry. I decided to take a short nap under the assumption I would be awakened in a reasonable period of time by the buzzer on the dryer. Wrong! I slept right through the dryer buzzer even though it goes off three times before ending its cycle. I am awake now and my wife has just gotten home. Now it's time to save the world with Jack Bauer on "24". Just so your reading of my blog tonight isn't totally worthless, here are some thoughts I have recently received in my in box.

The spirituality behind the Twelve Steps is a “low Church” approach to evangelization and healing that is probably our only hope in a suffering world of six-and-a-half billion people. Do we really need to verify belief in atonement doctrines and the Immaculate Conception when most of God’s physical, animal and human world is on the verge of mass suicide and extinction? Our suffering is psychological, relational and addictive: the suffering of people who are comfortable on the outside but oppressed and empty within. It is a crisis of meaninglessness and the false self, which had tried to find meaning in possessions, prestige and power. It doesn’t work. So we turn to ingesting and buying to fill our empty souls. The Twelve Steps walk us back out of our addictive society. Like all steps toward truth, they lead downward. Bill Wilson and his A.A. movement have shown us that the real power is when we no longer seek, need or abuse power. Real power is not at the top but at the bottom. Those who admit they are powerless have the only power that matters in the world or in the Church. Saint Bill W., pray for us.
-Richard Rohr

The pain, the discomfort, the sickness are what they are. We can always cope with the way life moves and changes. The mind of an enlightened human being is flexible and adaptable. The mind of the ignorant person is conditioned and fixed.
-Ajahn Sumedho, “Seeing the Way”

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
-His Holiness the Dalai Lama

In the afternoon I went out to the old horse barn with the Book of Proverbs and indeed the whole Bible, and I was wandering around in the hayloft, where there is a big gap in the roof. One of the rotting floorboards gave way under me and I nearly feel through. Afterwards I sat and looked out at the hills and the gray clouds and couldn't read anything. When the flies got too bad, I wandered across the bare pasture and sat over by the enclosure wall, perched on the edge of a ruined bathtub that has been placed there for the horses to drink out of. A pipe comes through the wall and plenty of water flows into the bathtub from a spring somewhere in the woods, and I couldn't read there either. I just listened to the clean water flowing and looked at the wreckage of the horsebarn on top of the bare knoll in front of me and remained drugged with happiness and with prayer.
-Thomas Merton "Entering the Silence/Journals Volume 1"

Monastic Day Trip

Today turned out to be a beautiful day. It was cool but also bright and sunny and the sky was blue. When I got out of bed this morning it was a different story. The temperature was in the low 20's with a very brisk wind that created a windchill in the teens. As I pumped gas into my car in the early morning darkness while freezing my ass off, I wondered why I was even up, much less why was I driving to the monastery. However, as the car warmed up and I held a cup of hot coffee in my hand, I was soon enjoying my solitary drive. These early morning drives along the country highways are actually very enjoyable. As I drove along I could see many, many damaged trees from the recent ice storm. Before arriving at the monastery I stopped for a second cup of coffee at the home of my good friend, Father Dennis. We enjoyed some pleasant conversation. I hated to have such a short visit but I had business at the monastery. A nice size group awaited me in the room at the monastery where we meet every month. We had some good discussion that had me wondering, "What is it about the monastery that seems to attract people who are hurting"? Within my group, and with people in general who visit the monastery, there seems to be a fair amount of personal pain and distress. Admittedly, I think most people, whether or not they visit monasteries, are broken and wounded to some degree. I am one of them. That does not make me unique. It makes me human. I think the monastery attracts hurting and wounded people because it is a place of healing, a spiritual hospital of sorts. Of course, I treat my soul and my heart much like my body when it is sick. I try to take my medicine and follow the doctor's directions as best I can. I tend to suffer...and heal...in silence. I am simply not the kind of person that always needs to talk about it. I am very private about such things. Perhaps I hold in too much but I prefer to think that I am simply stoic and I don't need to spill my guts all the time. Some people do, some people don't. Maybe someday I will have a breakdown from holding it all in. If I am holding something in that I need to let go, I do not know what it is. For me the realization that I am broken and wounded is enough. Others experience the same to a greater or lesser degree. I can only acknowledge my own brokenness, let it go, and move on with my life. The drive home from the monastery always seems stressful. Going to the monastery always feels like I am leaving chaos and entering the calm. Coming home it is the reverse. The increasing intensity of the traffic is a good metaphor for the return to the world. The day ended with dinner. Chloe and her parents met my wife and I at a restaurant. After our meal we walked a short distance to the pie and ice cream shop. If you want to be "Pa Paw of the Year", take your granddaughter to a pie and ice cream shop. Of course, at this moment my blood sugar level is off the chart based on the way I feel. Everything has a price. When will I learn?