My dear friend Rev. Steve Pieters brings out the "warm and friendly" in me
when he took this photo over dinner in L.A. in the fall of 2016.
On his Facebook page he points out the dove on my shoulder!
The
morning I am writing this, I awoke at 2:30 a.m., and my mind started bouncing
around. I remembered it was my parents’ birthdays, born on the same day one
year apart. I gave thanks in prayer for them, then said the Lord’s Prayer, all
silently, in my heart as well as my head. As sometimes happens, the prayers
“rested” me back to sleep.
And
I had a comforting dream.
It
began as a funeral, but morphed into a wedding. It began at a church, but
morphed into a large living room in a home with family history, not mine, but
that of either the bride or groom, and the father of one of them explained what
it had meant to the family after the divorce. I knew a few of the people, but
in a distant way, as those I might see occasionally. We sat comfortably around
the perimeter of the living room on sofas and chairs.
I
was the officiant. I felt inadequately prepared, but went with the flow. I’ve
written before that I am often working in my dreams, but this was not heavy
duty, rather, relaxed and comfortable. To pad the service, given that I had
prepared no homily, I began asking the family members about their experience
with marriage. The wedding became a kind of group therapy.
As
I indicated, the parents of one of the couple were divorced, but both were in
attendance and friendly with one another. The other parents had had a long and
satisfying marriage. As I encouraged them to speak of their relationships, one
of the guests said, not rudely, “Shouldn’t we be about the service? That’s what
we came for.” Probably this represented another part of me, schedule and goal
oriented, a contrast to the casual part that was enjoying the conversation.
The
brother of one of the principals explained that he and his husband, sitting
beside him on a sofa, had recently decided to “open” their relationship, and he
assumed that I, as a minister, would disapprove. I explained, to the contrary,
that I believed every couple had to make their own choices on how to live out
their commitment.
“Marriage
is hard,” I said, “And a lifelong marriage is tougher still. Isn’t it helpful
for married couples to share their experience with the couple being married
today?”
And
that was how the dream ended. Part way through the dream, I awoke, but fell
asleep again, resuming the dream where I had left off, something I don’t recall
happening before. Maybe because it was a warm and friendly place.
Of
course, with dreams, I usually try to figure out what might have prompted the
various parts. Yesterday I read a very satisfying belated Christmas letter from
someone I had worked alongside in the church, and it was all about his family,
his second wife and her siblings, their separate children and grandchildren.
And recently, I had learned a gay couple, friends of ours, had decided to open
up their relationship. So that helps account for some of the ingredients.
And
the comfortable conversation about all this? Where did that come from?
I’ve
written a much visited post about the death of my neighborhood church a few
years back, Ormewood Park Presbyterian. I had stopped attending before I
began serving other churches. It was not because I did not like the people,
it’s that I thought it a terrible waste that we worshiped in the “traditional”
pattern, when in fact, I thought we should be talking together about what makes
life work for us, what our faith means, and so on.
Now
Wade and I have been attending Ormewood Church, a new church start in the same place,
in which a part of the service is dedicated to small groups, given a question
for the day that relates to the worship. As an introvert, I find this
challenging, but as a concept, I find this closer to what a spiritual community
should be about. And we’re getting to know our neighbors in a whole new way. No
doubt this is the predecessor to the warm and friendly place I experienced in
the dream, a place that invites conversation about meaningful things, like
marriage.
This
will seem a non-sequitur, but I thought of an article I had read earlier in the
week by a woman who had anticipated difficulty sleeping in the days following a laparoscopic
surgery. She wanted a painkiller, but her doctors in Germany resisted, recommending
simple ibuprofen, one telling her that “The pain will guide you. You will know
when to rest more; you will know when you are healing. … All you need is rest.”
She
explains she knows how to sleep, but not how to rest. Almost Zen-like her
anesthesiologist tells her, “Drink a cup of coffee, slowly. And whatever you
do, do not get it in a to-go cup. You must sit in one place and enjoy this cup,
slowly.”
On
my own I am fairly good at “resting in God,” Augustine’s stated spiritual goal,
but resting in spiritual community is quite another challenge.
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