Friday Five (Vol. 28) – Dreams edition

— 1 —

As Debbie Harry famously crooned: Dreaming is free. And I thought I’d do a little today, mostly because I woke up with the first song I link to below echoing in my head, but also just to do a little light writing. I’d considered the subject of dreams before as examples of them are scattered throughout Scripture and the lives of the saints. But that involved heavier lifting than I’m up for today.

First up, a song from my daughter’s favorite movie, Tangled. No matter who we are or our situation, we all need a dream. Make it a big one, and be flexible and receptive to change. Like a million other little boys I wanted to grow up to pitch at Fenway Park. Ok, so that didn’t work out…but I found a new dream or two instead.

I’ve Got A Dream – Tangled
Though my face leaves people screaming
There’s a child behind it, dreaming
Like everybody else, I’ve got a dream

— 2 —

“God has created me to do him some definite service; he has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another. I have my mission – I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next… I have a part in a great work; I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons…” ~ Cardinal John Henry Newman

— 3 —

Part of getting a new dream is realizing that our dreams are not meant to be kept to ourselves. A great dream is a selfless one…a mission…and it is often in serving others that we awake to find we’ve suddenly achieved a dream of our own even if it wasn’t the one we set out to accomplish. The lyrics I quote below are meaningful to me today as half of my life is behind me and I am the sum of my experiences, both good and bad. When you dream, do not be afraid to fail or make a fool of yourself. You have to put yourself out there.

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following Your Will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing…” ~ Thomas Merton

Dream On – Aerosmith
Half my life is in books written pages
Live and learn from fools and from sages

— 4 —

“I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.” ~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

— 5 —

Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” ~ G.K. Chesterton

Photo source: photos.cleveland.com

And now that I have reached the halfway point (or more) I find that my dreams transition to those of my children. To do what I can to help them not just achieve their own, but to learn how to dream themselves. I find I do this through books, stories, movies and musicals and plays and sonnets and songs. And through fairy tales. Especially through fairy tales. These tales, while seeming to be overly simplistic or idealistic to some, demonstrate over and over again the real life virtues of Fides, Spes and Caritas (Faith, Hope and Love). Of Prudence and Temperance, and of Fortitude and Justice. Without dreams and fairy tales the seven opposites of these virtues flourish (pride, envy, wrath, sloth, greed, gluttony and lust) can flourish. If we, or our children or others we influence in this life, do not learn, practice and share the light of these virtues the gathering darkness will indeed grow more suffocating.

“Fairy tale does not deny the existence of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance. It denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat…giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy; Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.” ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

I Have A Dream – ABBA
If you see the wonder of a fairy tale
You can take the future even if you fail
I believe in angels
Something good in everything I see

 

Reeds

Lent arrived early this year.

For reasons that shall, for now, remain known only to me I’ve not found the strength nor the desire to write anything this week. I have been in the midst of a storm that has caused the loss of sleep, the straining of a relationship that I hold very dear, and also a lot of prayer. Indeed, I took Monday off from work in order to spend a day in solitude and reflection before spending a few hours on my knees in a convent chapel. The Blessed Sacrament was exposed there for adoration, and a nun in a pink habit borne out of obedience to her vows is always present. I alternately sat, knelt, and paced while after a time another nun would come to relieve her and begin a vigil of her own.

The worst feeling I’ve known as a father is to be unable to help one of my children. As an American male we are immersed in a culture that tells us we can fix anything and fix it rightnow. When this doesn’t work we become stubborn and prideful in our attempts to slam our square peg of an obvious solution into the round hole of a problem. We stiffen our necks. We succumb to our pride. We further damage the very ones we are trying to help. And when nothing works we fall into despair and feel the sting of being a failure as a father. This of course, is a lie.

Satan has been attacking the family since the Dawn of Time. Specifically he loves attacking the concept of fatherhood. Take a look around our culture today. I’d say he’s been pretty successful. On Monday during the first hour of silently sobbing and spilling many tears over the pages of the book from which I was trying to read I had convinced myself after weeks of not being able to “fix” this issue that I was indeed a massive failure as a dad. I had failed my son. He deserved better.

You could almost see the sneering lips curl into a smile from the demon on my shoulder.

During his time in the desert Scripture records that Christ was tempted three times by the devil, who used as a weapon the scriptures themselves, though out of context. Typical, really. And if you take a look around you (I’m thinking specifically of certain politicians here) you will see this tactic is still being deployed today. But if we are to learn a lesson from this story it is that the way to counter those lies is with Scripture. This is exactly what Jesus did three times. And on the third time he was left alone to be tended by angels.

Here I began to write a little meditation on this passage from the 4th chapter of St. Matthew, but decided against it. What I will instead write is that I took this lesson to heart and for the first time in a long time really leaned on Scripture for support. Yes, I know the Bible. Yes, I read and study the Bible. But too many times I have not really searched through it for answers to life’s problems or even for comfort. I would engage my head but not my heart. But before I left that pew and that chapel I recalled something written by St. Anthony of Padua: “Earthly riches are like the reed. Its roots are sunk in the swamp, and its exterior is fair to behold; but inside it is hollow. If a man leans on such a reed, it will snap off and pierce his soul.”

I’ve leaned on enough reeds in my life to see the wisdom and truth in this. I bear the scars of being pierced many times as they’ve snapped.

It was late in the afternoon when I drove home thinking about this line and what it might mean. Shortly after my arrival I received my first answer. On my bedroom pillow my wife had left me a handwritten note that simply said:

Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. (Romans 12:12)

Below that she had written:

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all men generously and without reproaching, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways, will receive anything from the Lord. (James 1: 5-8)

Because I’m a stubborn thick-headed son-of-a-bitch, I received the final mallet blow upside my skull that night before bed when I read the following in an Ignatian Prayer book I had picked up from my bookshelf:

For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me; when you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you, says the Lord… (Jeremiah 29:11-14)

Ok God. I got it. It’s time to stop leaning on the reeds of my own understanding and find something stronger.

I did. Angels have come. And so far that has made all the difference.

(To be continued…)

The Flight from Failure to Redemption

This morning at The Catholic Thing I read a piece by Ashley McGuire about writing that really struck home. She writes:

As a little girl, I found it infinitely frustrating that I could not fly. Sure, people can fly in planes, but we can’t fly. It took me a couple of decades to gradually discover that, in fact, humans can fly. Writing is flying. Flying looks like this: keyboard before you, wrist arched from the weight of an eager index finger hovering above a letter. Any letter. Lower and click. And you’re off!

Suddenly you are restrained by nothing. The stars are letters and punctuation. They collide into fantastic supernovas. Your imagination has an engine. Eventually you are pulled back in as everything comes together on a page, leaving ink smudges on your fingertips or crisp black lines on a bright screen. The sweet assurance that your flight was not a dream.

McGuire’s right, and in those moments when the flightpath is clear there are few things as exhilarating as the transfer of lucid thought to paper or screen. Ah, sweet lucidity.

I’ve been in a rut lately when it comes to writing. Last week it seemed my plane would never come out of the clouds. This week I couldn’t coax the plane away from the gate let alone taxi down the runway. This isn’t to say I’ve tried. I’ve written more than one rant or screed but have stopped halfway through them all. I was unable to keep on any discernable path and they all just meandered through the narrative. And what was that narrative? The anger and sadness that is the state of things at Penn State. When I first heard about the grand jury report on ESPN Radio’s Mike & Mike In The Morning on my drive to work last week I could hardly believe it. I felt sick to my stomach. So naturally during a slow part of my morning I read the actual grand jury report. And then I walked outside to a bench at the corner of 13th & O Streets and sat in the autumn morning sun to catch my breath, trying not to throw up. Like many people I suppose I then read too much…too many commentaries and articles and opinion pieces. I tried to write my own. I failed, because my indignant and righteous anger kept my shaking hands from conveying any coherency at all to my keyboard.

The targets of my disgust were of course the alleged perpetrator of these crimes, as well as those who covered for him including the head football coach himself. I tried to write about assigning blame to anything I could: the worship of football, the promotion of deviance in our culture, and on and on.

And then there was of course my main target: Mike McQueary. I still have to pause while typing to ensure I stop myself from going off into the narrative weeds once more. Instead of pouring all of that bile onto the screen I am choosing another path.

I know how the Penn State community as a whole feels. Not those who covered this up. Not the few hundred morons who were rioting when Joe Paterno was fired or chanting his name in blind allegiance at the PSU/Nebraska football game a few days later. I’m talking about the over 44,000 current students and over 500,000 alumni and supporters of that university. I know how they feel because I, and a billion other Catholics, lived through it a decade ago. We are still living through it.

We know what it’s like to have the name of the institution to which you belong dragged through the mud because of the actions of horrible men living a double life. We know what it’s like to be further horrified as the scope of the coverup by other men in a position to put a stop to the crimes are exposed. We know what it’s like to dread another day’s newspaper, or the cable news, or the internet, as the wound continues to grow and to bleed. We know what it is to be “guilty by association” even though we had nothing whatsoever to do with the crimes.

It is known to Catholics as The Long Lent of 2002. It has taken a decade to even begin to heal. In time, Penn State will heal as well, but there is still a lot of poison that needs to be expunged from their wound.

We know what it is to continue to be ridiculed and scorned by those with an agenda. To be the butt of jokes. Penn State will learn this as well. It will not be fair. But it will still happen. It does not change who you are as a person. It does not define you or your institution.

There are similarities. Last week we learned of university officials who covered for Sandusky, and we saw students gather around the statue of Paterno and chant and riot. A decade ago, for every bishop who engaged in covering their backsides there were parishes who gathered around Fr. Soandso when his disgusting crimes were uncovered and saying they would stand by him through his unwarranted persecution.

To those of us who will be so quick to condemn an entire university or group of people, whether Catholics or Penn State, I suggest you say to yourself what I finally said to myself a few days ago: “There but for the grace of God, go I.”

When I began to realize that my hatred for a man I’d never met and a man I only knew through a damning grand jury report was burning so white hot that I was losing sleep, that phrase came to me. For while I’d desperately love to believe that had I stumbled onto the scene in the locker room showers that McQueary did I would have become Instant Chuck Norris and dispensed justice, I can’t honestly say that because I wasn’t the one who did. It’s too easy today to be a combox warrior on the internet, thump our chests with braggadocio and SHOUT IN BIG CAPITAL LETTERS WHAT WE’D HAVE DONE. But we don’t know. Because it wasn’t us. People do weird things in shocking situations. When an evil is exposed involving someone we don’t know, everybody is so sure that they are a hero who would have beaten the living hell out of the accused and dragged his sorry ass to the local police station. I hope I would have.

In the blogosphere comboxes we are all Dirty Harry. Sadly, history has shown again and again that what the combox warriors say they’d do and the reality of what they do are two different things.

• After sleeping with and impregnating Uriah’s wife Bathsheba, David ordered his commanding officer to put Uriah in the front of the battle and have the soldiers draw back from him so that he would be killed. The commander did nothing. He and David failed.
• When he cried out that he would never deny his Lord, and yet denied him three times before the dawn, Peter failed.

There are too many to list, not all of them biblical of course. German citizens living in towns near death camps. The Chinese populace who walked by the crumpled form of a two-year-old little girl who’d been struck not once, but twice, by passing cars before dying at the hospital. We all fail every day on a massive scale.

Yet redemption can and does come despite all the shame and failure. David and Peter both redeemed themselves mightily. Despite the sneering and the dismissals by its critics the Catholic Church is doing the same. I’m choosing to pray that Mike McQueary, and others at Penn State, somehow do so as well.

The Fall was the result of a simple formula: Pride, disobedience, death. That formula is still at work today.

For those of us blindsided by the events within the Catholic Church, we reminded ourselves that our faith is in Christ Jesus, not in His human messengers, sinners all. When our attention is diverted from the message to the messenger, the object of our faith is obscured and a whirlwind of emotions threatens to upend the foundation of hope we have in Him who saves.

Through it all my foundation never changed because He does not change. I learned long ago to not put my blind trust in men or confidence in man’s princes. I won’t pretend to know who or what the half-million PSU member family puts their trust. It does appear that for too long they put it in men, and in particular one man. A football coach.

“There but for the grace of God, go I.”

45 minutes, or a lifetime

“Everything around her is a silver pool of light …”

The best three minutes of your day today via The Washington Post:

Twenty-four hours after surgery to fix her cleft lip, a little Brazilian girl’s face is still swollen and painful.

But the look in her eyes when she sees her new face in the mirror for the first time is hard to mistake.

To see and be seen, both physically and metaphorically, is so integral to being human, so that without these doctors she might have been relegated to a life where people look away. If you’re ever seeking a charity to support, please consider Operation Smile. Another way that you can help these beautiful cleft affected children is to send cleft bottles to orphanages through great organizations like Love Without Boundaries.

Many cleft babies in third world countries suffer severe malnutrition and often die from not being able to get enough nutrition in their first year. If cleft bottles are not available and they are not in most developing countries including China,these children are given milk with a spoon or an eye dropper which is very time consuming and difficult.

These types of palate correction operations can take as little as 45 minutes. Yet there are those who are justifying the aborting of children in the womb because of this with such frequency that the British government is fighting to suppress the statistics of the frequency in which this occurs. And a cleft palate is a less common reason used to justify killing children. Here in America we have our own reasons of course, which are then used to accomplish things the way we do best: through litigation. Imagine being this child (his name is Bryan) and growing up one day to learn that your parents wanted you dead so much that they sued under Florida’s wrongful birth statute after you were born. (Wrongful birth? How upside down have we become?)

The time spent for an actual abortion procedure takes 5-10 minutes for first trimester procedures, and 15-20 minutes for second trimester procedures, depending on gestation, with an additional 3-5 hours for paperwork, blood draw, lab tests, counseling, etc. Plus 20-30 minutes of in-clinic recovery time. And the rest of your life to think about it.

45 minutes.

While it is true that his parents didn’t give him up for adoption or worse, leave him to die, I can’t imagine the shock they had when Bryan was born missing three limbs after being told repeatedly by their OB-GYN that the ultrasound showed everything was normal. Some have even argued that they “had” to say they would have had him aborted in order to sue and win their case. This, however, is called perjury. Pray for this family.

His handicap in this life won’t be his lack of limbs. It will be his parents reminding him over and over that he’s “not normal.” To Bryan and his parents I wish to introduce the inspirational Nick Vujicic and the other members of The Butterfly Circus.

The Waiting

“I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”

- From “East Coker”, No. 2 of The Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot

Having begun at last to make time to read Eliot’s Quartet, I came across the passage above in “East Coker”, a poem about life, death, and the continuity between the two. Perhaps it is more suited to a picture of a man or a woman looking across the horizon. Or a panoramic vista at twilight. But I immediately thought of a picture I took last Friday night while outside of town with my wife after we had dined out. It struck me as a sad scene of things left behind. Of a once-beloved playmate waiting eternally for a child’s return. He sits at the site of much play and imagination gazing forevermore out into the open fields beyond the treeline.

I admit that the line “wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought” seemed to fit Winnie the Pooh. That seems like something he would do. And knowing Pooh, once under the stars and the moonight, he’d still dance.

I thought of this tonight as I read a message from a friend describing some challenges placed upon her and her family’s plates. We all go through trials in this life. We all face medical or fiscal challenges for ourselves and our loved ones. Our first reactions are typically to worry ourselves sick or into a state of frenzy over things we cannot control. We feel alone and in the dark.

Stop. Be still. Pray or meditate. For me it’s a few verses from the Scriptures. Here are a few, for example.

The faith and the hope and the love are there in the waiting, not in the worrying. Things will get dark. But while God is typically associated with the light, he doesn’t just operate when the sun is up. He is there in the darkness, too.

So be still in the light and the dark. And don’t forget to dance now and then.

©2011 Jeff A Walker. All Rights Reserved.