Lectio Divina

One of the most intimate scenes I've read in a novel happened in Grapes of Wrath. Ma Joad--the pillar of the Joad family in increasingly bleak circumstances--calls her daughter to help her with a task. She calls out the daughter's name "Rose of Sharon" and then repeats it over and over to herself under her breath, "enjoying the feel of it in her mouth." I've often felt a need to read quickly over that passage, as it isn't meant for the 3rd person omniscient narrator, let alone the unworthy reader.

I enjoyed Matt's Lectio Divina lesson at church last night. Lectio Divina is fancy Latin for purposeful meditation of scripture, involving prayer, silence, meditation, and memorization. I've been doing a lot of reciting to myself these days, and this was a way to focus that memorization and meditation on scripture, which I do less often than I do with other writings.

"I love you. Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, would be my treasure still."--from Jane Eyre

"Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, protects all things."--I Corinthians 13:6

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." --Matthew 7:12

"For his withdrawal would have been a flight, his deliverance an accident, his reward dishonor, his future perhaps damnation. Then he would have borne witness, not to his faith or to God's mercy, but to how dreadful was the journey to the mountain in Moriah."--Kierkegaard's Fear & Trembling

But I have to tell you this first.

For the last several nights, I've been having horror-show-proportion dreams.

Last night, I dreamed that I was with a friend and her mom wedding dress shopping. With us was a toddler who could barely walk, but we had no stroller or other type of carrier. The child kept falling into potholes, or entangling himself, or being dragged off by strangers. His mother would just leave him alone in whatever quandary he was in, until he figured out how to help himself. Out of desperation I would step in and rescue the child, usually waiting till the last possible moment, thinking surely the child's mother would do something. The grandmother was clueless, floating along in a sea of oblivion, wondering aloud if the sleeves on that one mother's-gown were too puffy, or too lacy. I felt so bad for the child, yet so impotent to help him. At one point, we were all standing around the parking lot of a dreary strip mall, when I heard crying, and looked up to see the mother walking away saying, "You didn't give me your arm. I told you to give me your arm." I couldn't see any sign of the child, so I kneeled down and started stroking a wet, oily patch of pavement, saying "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. When she walks away, I'll help. But where are you?" I turned to see a pothole that had formed around a manhole cover. I peeked in, and sure enough, the baby was lying in the hole with one ear and the side of his head exposed. He was face down in thick mud. I reached for his arm, but he jerked it away from me. I let him drown.

Interpretation?

Listening to Leonard Cohen, "Suzanne"

I am heartily sick of dim lights and night time. I want bright lights, bracing winds. To be awake all the time and never sleep. To be bold and daring, chiseled, with wings and a voice that would raise the dead. To be thinking and talking. To be talked to and questioned. To be interested and interesting, in the present, able to measure the past and carry it with me. Able to charge into the future.

I can't do that under these circumstances. Fortunately, these circumstances have come to an end, which is the real meaning of the dream I had last night.

I Have a Dream

That I live in a small, four-room house with a tiny bathroom and a half-finished upstairs combo attic/bonus room. You walk up a small stone walkway through my tiny but lush yard, past the bottle tree, and up onto a brick-walled porch with small groupings of tables and chairs. Curtains are hung if you want the privacy, but are usually tied back to let air and light in. Open the front door into a wide center passage that runs the full depth of the house. And from the front door, you can either walk into any room you choose (all doors open into the passage) or you can join the rest of us on the back screened porch. Of course, the screened porch is also used occasionally for sleeping, so just be prepared for that.

If you choose to walk into the living room, you will make a left inside the door. On a rainy day, your umbrella will go into a big ceramic pot that probably looks like a cactus or something naturalistic Layla made for me in her after-school pottery class. You can hang your sweater on a hook in the wall. Feel free to throw your shoes off. Come in and browse the built-in bookshelves, flop down on a pile of big fluffy pillows on the floor and appreciate the atelier-style art arrangements, or lounge in the wide seat attached to the picture window with leaded panes.

After some time talking or watching a movie or listening to music, you will need sustenance, so I invite you to step on into my kitchen, which is through a small door in the back of the room. You probably almost missed the door because the bookcases go across the top of the door, and there are things hanging off of them. But the kitchen is through there, with checkerboard tile floors in white and black, and cool grey walls. You can sit at my red & white hoosier table while I fill the coffeepot from the enamel sink and I will tell you the story of the chair you are sitting on. It came from a Memphis brothel. If that creeps you out, you are welcome to move over to the faded green velour chaise. Make yourself at home. Please excuse the trashcans lining the back wall. Recycling doesn't come easy, sometimes. Nor does composting. Or cat care, for that matter.

We will drink much coffee, so just help yourself to the bathroom that opens off the central hallway. It is a little small, but the pedestal sink and tall linen cupboard in the corner help things fit more comfortably. The tile floors get cold in here, so I hope the fluffy bath rug will help.

I like a little private time in my office, so make yourself at home upstairs in the bonus room while I finish writing my masterpiece. The tiny windows at the front, sides, and rear of the big attic let in a little light, and you can see the moon and stars through them at night. But you will be very comfortable up here in the guest bed and you can put all your things away in the chifferobe. There is a record player up here, and records, so you will not be alone. Don't trip on the toys lying about that are supposed to be in the toybox and the dress-up bin. The nieces and nephews forget to put things away! Be careful on the stairs when you come down because they are wooden and quite steep. The original owner must have been shorter and skinnier and much stronger of leg than I am!

Join me in my office, and we'll talk and then go outside to enjoy a nice dinner around the fire pit. We'll watch the stars come out and the moon rise and watch the neighborhood kids catch fireflies. You can help me weed the flowerbeds, since I do a really bad job of it. In fact, I'll turn it all over to you if like. I get so ambitious and I like to have a nice view from the bedroom windows.

We will talk and laugh and discuss and reminisce and listen to music and eat and drink and be silent. Then we will go into the house and I will go to sleep in my bedroom where the bed is practically never made and clothes are hanging on the back of the vanity table chair. But the quilt above me is warm and snuggly and my family pictures are on the walls and a pile of books is on the nightstand waiting to be read. The cat's claws tap-tap on the wooden floors of the hallway and I hear him knock over some books that were sitting on a table. As long as he doesn't find the knitting and pull all the yarn off the needles--fine.

Good night.