The Next Day - Sunday Morning Wonderings

Dreams will always be a mystery to me.  Sometimes I am able to fly, and in the dream I'm conscious of that ability and make that choice...sometimes to escape danger, sometimes for the pure joy. Then there are dreams that are more reflective of who I am.....completely nuts!  For instance, last night I dreamed I was both a patient and a doctor (an OB/GYN doctor)!  As a patient I was about ready to go home when a 98 year-old woman came into the Emergency Room, ready to deliver a baby.  We were short-staffed and so I was asked to do the delivery.  Panic time!  I couldn't remember anything I had learned in medical school, or in practice.  So, the rest of the dream involved finding a way to save face and leave hospital.

Come to think of it, a number of dreams have involved my threatened self-esteem.  More than once (in dreamland) I have stood at the pulpit dressed in less than adequate attire, or completely unprepared to deliver a sermon.  Thankfully, not all dreams involve fear or some other unpleasant emotion.  There are those that are just wild and like parts of 15 jigsaw puzzles thrown together.

Perhaps dreams are just reflections of how we do life.  Often there is an underlying fear that sits on our shoulder most of the day, but we have learned to ignore it on the conscious level.  However, the fear is always there looking for an opening to express itself.  As for the mix-up of different puzzle pieces...perhaps that is sitting on the other shoulder, waiting for us to express our creativity.  We can take pieces of our life experiences and observations, learning and questioning to make something unique and beautiful.

I play the piano for my own amusement, and to Faye's bemusement. Often, as I play without music, I will start on one song and end up having played parts of three or four melodies.  It drives her nuts.  She will be humming along, or singing the words of a hymn with me, when suddenly she discovers she is not singing to the melody I am playing.

The piano playing I can correct by just being more conscious of what or how I want the music to flow.  And being creative is a wonderful gift we all have from our Creator.  We might not always be aware of what it is, however.  As for the fear that sits on our shoulder...the only way that I have found for that to disappear beyond the unconscious level is to hand it over to our Creator and trust in God's capable and unfailing love.  It really does work.  When I have asked for His presence in my night time rest, I have never had a bad or stressful dream.  Works during the day as well...though I do need to be more intentionally conscious of God's presence while awake.

Sweet dreams to you all from a nutty Wondermutt

Thursday Morning Musings

Mondays and Tuesdays I volunteer at the hospital where I worked before retirement.  This week a friend stopped by to ask me for help in locating a hymn which had been playing and replaying in his head all night, and now this morning as well.  He sang a little bit of the song, and sometime after he left I found the hymn in the book he was looking for.  The thing is that two days later, the hymn is still chasing around in my head.  And it brightens every corner it rounds, lightens every place it rests, and lingers long after it resumes it quest for expression.

Thank you, John, for asking my help.  Because you not only gave me a sense of value, but you left a memory and a light source that has healing in it.  You are a valued friend.

None of us realize how effectively warmth and lightness can reflect from our expression and words, or be just as easily absorbed and swallowed up as we are in ourselves.  One of the books that I have been reading lately is by Robert Fulghum.  He always seems to leave me thoughtfully light-hearted, and aware of the great potential for good that is in everyone of us.

Break time...............

One of my favorite birds is the seagull.  Raucously social, yet every bird is looking out for him/herself.  I didn't say that everything is admirable about seagulls, but there is a beauty in their flight, in their solitary posture as they view the world beneath them.  Who could help wishing they had the same absolute confidence, that everything is going to be all right, as the gull who rides up the crest of a wave that appears about to engulf it and then disappears in the depths of the following trough?  Have you ever watched a seagull marching along the shoreline, picking up just about every object that isn't sand to examine it for what only God knows?

Seagulls are into life and everything about life.  Nothing escapes their attention.  They either eat an object, pick it up and discard it, or fight over it until something else is spotted.  But, I don't see them going to war.  And what to me sounds like mournful cries, or cursing, could be beyond belief in its creativity, beauty, harmony, and meaning to those have the gift of understanding.  For me, a seagull expresses the wild freedom of life that harmonizes with the environment that gives it life.