A Non-event. Really!

Probably the most important event to occur this past week was a non-event that took place yesterday. I always (well, almost always) attend Mass at the little chapel near my office on Wednesday and Friday noons, the only times that daily Mass is offered. Yesterday, however, as sometimes happens, I had a meeting at 11:00. I hoped that I would be able to make it out in time for Mass, and I even announced at the beginning of the meeting that I needed to leave at 11:45. However, since the meeting was a briefing for me about an upcoming project in which I need to be involved, there was no way I could simply duck out at the appointed time. As it turned out, the meeting did not end until 12:15.

Disappointed, I returned to my office and rummaged around for something that would serve as lunch. Just at that moment, one of the employees from another division who usually attends that same Mass and whom I rarely see otherwise came into my office and asked to talk. He has not been at Mass for a couple of months, and that is what he wanted to talk about, how he is going through a down period, a dry period, a questioning period.

We talked for more than half an hour. These are topics that are routine in my life -- the same questions that come up in catechism classes, at prayer groups, in email conversations, and in spiritual discussions with friends. I have a somewhat different view of some of the trials of life, perhaps because I have been through so many and such difficult ones, perhaps because I am a converted Catholic, perhaps because my conversations with God have taken me in a slightly different direction -- perhaps because of all of these things or because of none of them. Anyway, most people with whom I get into such conversations believe that God is testing them. I don't see it that way. Why would God test people? Why would God need to give a test to someone to find out his or her tolerance level, survival skills, depth of faith, or the like? God knows that already. It seems like a waste of time to me. I think that God is rather trusting people -- trusting them to accept Divine help and support, to accept challenges and difficulties and not blame, to grow/increase and not decrease, to come closer to God by sharing just a small sip from "the cup" or carrying just a sliver of "the cross." I thank God for entrusting me with the trials that get sent my way; they have been the most meaningful part of my life.

Perhaps I was meant to miss Mass today so that I could share something more intimate with that colleague. I hope, if nothing else, I was able to hold the cup a little steadier for him and provide a little bit of additional lift to the cross he is carrying. Although I never made it to Mass for a blessing from the priest, a sacred moment was sent to me, a blessing from God. So, I now have more to thank God for!

(Also posted on 100th Lamb.)

Trust II

Recently in our prayer group, one of our members talked about some difficult times she and her family were facing, and she called it a "test" from God. We moved from there to similar kinds of issues in other members' families and then on to a discussion about my children, especially the three (two of my own and one who came and lived with us) who must deal with one or more birth defects (Noelle, Doah, Shura), along with my grandchildren who have also been affected by these family "gifts" (Nathaniel having been born with hydronephrosis and Nikolina with that, too, as well as OEIS Complex). It surprised me to learn that these people of God looked at my children and my family situation so differently from the way I look at it.

First, my children are not burdens. They are blessings.

Second, life with these children is not difficult although it is challenging. It is a constant opportunity to learn and to grow, including learning how to lean on God and others God sends, which, I believe, is something that God wants us to do.

Most important, in no way do I think that God is testing me or my family. Rather, I feel favored that God would trust me (of all people) with something so special. Likewise, I don't believe that my friends are experience a test from God. I believe that they are experiencing God's trusting them not only to cope with the difficult situations that they face but also to learn from them and to grow in faith (and yes, trust).

May God continue to bless all of us in this extraordinary way, and may we learn and grow and live up to His trust in us!

Trust

The fourth letter of FRATERNITY is T. It stands for trust.

In 2009, when I was teaching a course at Lithuania International University, I gave several Chapel speeches. After one, a student asked, "Do you think we can trust God?" So, when I returned last January, I knew the topic I had to address when the chaplain asked for a repeat performance: trust.

Among other examples, I told the students how I lost a credit card on a business trip. I called the bank to cancel it, but Muslim colleagues with me stopped me. "Allah always takes care of you," they pointed out, correctly predicting my card would be in my hotel room. It was. I had forgotten that I had used it on the plane as a bookmark. The title of the book? Ruthless Trust: The Ragamuffin's Path to God. A divine lesson on trust?

No matter how great our faith, we all need that lesson occasionally not only for developing greater trust in God but also greater trust of each other. For what do members of a fraternity trust each other? For a helping hand, not a turned back, when we are weak. For love, not criticism, when we have transgressed. For acceptance of our spiritual experiences and mutual sharing of the ways in which God works in our lives.

As I told the college kids, when we lack trust, we can always ask God to help us trust Him more. Similarly, when we lack trust of each other, we can ask God to help us be the kind of people that He would like us to be: loving, trusting, caring. I believe that God delights in answering such prayers.

Reprinted from an article I wrote for our SFO newsletter, Footprints, in which each of the letters of fraternity is being defined, one newsletter at a time.

Dreams

I generally do not remember my dreams. I do not often remember even having them. I do remember having had a couple of nightmares. I only recall ever getting two of them, and I don't remember the story lines; rather, I remember only the fact that I got them and that I would wake up shaking. They showed up right after my conversion. Ever since, I have turned to God every night for protection from this kind of evil toying with my unconscious mind, and no nightmare has again appeared.

Although I do not generally remember my dreams, I know I must have them. I fall easily into deep sleep, and that means I am dreaming. Without REM sleep, one cannot renew one's body on a daily basis and becomes sleep deprived in spite of having slept. I am not sleep-deprived. I am almost immediately in REM sleep and can wake up fully refreshed after few hours than most.

In all, there are only three dreams that I can remember. Two arefrom bygone days; both hysterically funny, which is probably why I remember them since in both cases I woke myself up laughing. I also remember the one I had last night, a serious and insightful one, something more than a simple dream I think. I will let you judge.

For reasons I do not now recall, I was driving along our crooked, hilly, Maine-woods, farm road that travels the edge of the White Mountains far from anywhere, anything, and anybody. Suddenly, I saw a young girl walking the road, dressed in black clothes, with a cowl over he head, carrying a bundle. I called her over and asked if she needed help. She said yes and pulled back a corner of the wrapping of the bundle, revealing what seemed to be a mass of bloody flesh, telling me that it was a baby although I could see no head and hear no sound. "Give me a ride to the hospital," she said in a demanding voice.

The scene seemed very strange: miles from nowhere, covered in black, a face I could barely see, bloody flesh wrapped in a black shroud. My instinctive caution kicked in. Stop! Go no further! If I let her into the car, who knows what might happen. What would she really do with and on this ride?

I told her to stay put, that I would be back in 15 minutes. Then, I turned the car around and drove the five minutes back to the farmhouse I had just left, the place where I grew up (not only in the dream but also in reality). I forced Donnie, my husband, to leave the table where he was eating with the rest of the family, explaining what I had seen, and insisting that he come with me to help this girl, spooky as she might be. Shane, my grown son, also at the table, put into the some "weapons" of the tire iron type.

With Donnie at the wheel, we zoomed back to where I had left the girl in black, but she was not there. So, we turned back and went to the hospital. (Yes, that means we would have had to go past the hospital on the way to picking her up, but in the dream there was no hospital on the way to pick her up but there was one along the same road when we turned back). When we reached the hospital, we learned that her story, which I had doubted, was true. No one had picked her up; she had walked all the way there; the bloody bundle of flesh was a baby, who was doing fine as was the mother. When I went to her room, she was with a friend. Nonetheless, I entered.

I tried to hide my identity, again for reasons I do not recall, that made sense at the time of the dream but not now (as so many things in a dream do). However, she told me that she knew who I was because she had just found me on Internet. (I know not all these dream elements make sense since she had just delivered a baby and would not have been up and about using the Internet; one does not have computer connections, at least not yet, in hospital rooms; and all she had to go on was my face so she would have had to google a mental image, obviously an impossibility. Nonetheless, in the dream it all made sense.) Both she and her friend, it turns out, worked as junior-level specialists in my professional field and, therefore, after googling me, she understood who it was who had refused her a ride.

I felt very guilty about not picking her up. I felt guilty about my desire to check things out before doing the task before me: giving her a ride to the hospital. I felt guilty about my feelings of reservation. I felt guilty about not returning on time. I especially felt guilty about being afraid -- of what, a newborn baby and a young mother in need?

The rest of the dream occurred synoptically, with many years rolled into a few flashed images. As a result of my feelings of guilt, I became the godmother to her son. Over time, I helped her with him as he developed as well as in their daily life. (There seems to have been no father involved.) I became her emotional support and physical helper whenever there was a need. The relationship was not peer friendship. It was more one of mothering. And suddenly I awoke.

I don't think that this was an unprovoked dream, nor do I think it was provoked by me. Last night, like every night, I asked God to prevent Evil from taking over my unconscious mind and send instead dreams about Him, so I was not expecting this kind of weird dream.

I also do not think that it is a prophetic dream; that is, I don't think that something like this is going to happen. There will be no lady carrying a new-born baby down our old farm road where I will be driving past. The likelihood of my driving our old farm road is preposterous. I rarely go to Maine, and when I do, I don't go to that part. Once in the past 42 years since leaving there, I have driven past the farmhouse because I was nearby and wondered how it looked. Especially nonsensical is the idea of Donnie and Shane eating breakfast at our old farmhouse. They have not taken a trip together since hiking the Appalachian Trail in 1987. Donnie's leisure schedule has never coincided with adult Shane's. Moreover, the nearest hospital is 13 miles away and located in a nearby city; hospitals in the USA are not, for pragmatic reasons, located along isolated winding roads in farm country. So, for practical reasons, I don't think this is a prophetic dream.

I do think it is an intentional dream, a lesson that I have probably needed to be taught for a long time. I have no idea if my interpretation is correct, but I do have an interpretation. It goes something like the following:

(1) If someone is in my path, like the cowled lady, I should help immediately. I have not always done so; I have often hesitated.

(2) I should not delay in order to run for help in determining the authenticity of the task (the command to take her and something that I was unsure was really a baby to the hospital), evoked by the image of running for Donnie just as I run to a priest for confirmation of a locution and simply wait for more confirmation if no priest who takes locutions seriously is available.

(3) It is not of my concern whether the person will use the help appropriately; I have occasionally hesitated when approached by panhandlers.

(4) Doing the task with lack of alacrity may result in someone else being sent to help (the friend who was in the room with the cowled girl) and/or the ultimate assistance is less powerful or requires more complicated intervention than when I jump right on it (the cowled girl ended up walking a distance that she could have avoided).

(5) My safety was not at issue; this raises the question whether I am too self-protective physically or, more likely, emotionally at times when it comes to taskings.

All those "feelings of guilt" in the dream, I interpret as showing me my weaknesses, with the intent of the dream being to educate me. In the dream, I felt guilty about those weaknesses (and ultimately "made up" for them). In real life, I should trust God enough for me to move on out with any divinely imposed tasking without hesitation rather than waiting and repenting for the wait.

The authenticity piece troubled me initially. Fr. Thomas Dubay in his book, Authenticity, the book that has become second most helpful to me after the combined volumes of The Cloud of Unknowing and the Book of Privy Counseling, says to check with a priest (my preference always) and, if that is not possible and there is no immediate way of confirming the authenticity of a locution, to wait. I interpret this dream as saying the opposite. I would love to hear what he would have to say about the dream. Maybe I will write and ask him. In the interim, I will continue to check with a priest where I can do that quickly. Otherwise, if the prompting/tasking is not in contradiction to Scripture (so far, nothing has been), I will simply do as Fr. Barry once suggested after questioning (make that, grilling) me about a locution: do it and see what happens.

Does anyone have other insights? Has anyone received instructions through a dream? This is a first time for me; I don't want to over-interpret the dream. (Hm, there I go hesitating again!)