You know those dreams that make you ridiculously happy?
No, I don't mean the one I had when I was 8, where an enormous ice cream sundae loomed in front of me, and just as I was about to take the first bite of that creamy, gooey, nutty mountain, I woke up and realized it wasn't real.
Instead, I mean the dreams that nestle inside your heart like a purring kitten, the vibrations of which have you humming long after you have woken up and well into the day. The dreams where you meet a person or an animal that seems normal but that glows with an inner light. Where you accomplish something extraordinary and feel power surging through your veins. The dreams where you fly.
The other night I dreamt I climbed a tree and then ran around a park with the greatest ease (I get joint pain easily and am not normally a runner). Climbing the tree, I felt I could fly, that I could reach any heights, escape enemies, help new friends.
Upon waking, this excitement stayed with me. I felt that my being had been validated, the personal power that gets submerged under daily annoyances reasserting itself. A gentle reminder.
I forget that these dreams exist until one returns. And I vow to hold the feeling in my heart until it fades. I cling to reality but it slinks out and I am left clutching an empty shell.
I thank God for these angelic nudges but humbly ask if I might live among the stars more often and not only in sleep. But how?
I feel more aligned with this power when I am regular about praying and meditating, when I get enough exercise and listen to the voice that tells me to write, to be forgiving, to look up and greet the pigeon couple flying by. But the simplicity of this makes it seem irrelevant, and I stray.
Until one night, when I walk on snakes in the moonlight, banish a demon shaped like a cuddly cat by declaring God's power, meet a stranger who sings a song of love, fall from a cliff and soar back up...
Monday, November 24, 2008
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Another Inner Room
This Ramadan--the Muslim month of fasting and reflection that corresponded to the month of September this year--I set up a prayer space in my office.
It is my shameful secret that my office is the least used room in our apartment. When we moved to an apartment with an extra room, my husband generously agreed to give it to me, to encourage my writing. (He crammed his own broken desk and bookcase into a nook next to the cat litter box.) We fixed up my office with the better desk, two bookcases, relaxing landscape painting, plush rug, and so forth. Then we looked on with approval and left the room.
That was a year and a half ago, and I would sometimes venture in, engage in a fevered bout of writing, stash the notebook in a bookcase, and skulk out. The room is very noisy in summer and very very cold in winter. We use it as a guest room--I pretend to be out of sorts when I am denied the use of my personal writing space for those few days when someone stays there.
But this Ramadan, I made my presence felt in that room, and made it a more inviting place. At first, I had to force myself to pray and meditate there, instead of in the living room. But as I cleared the brush and paved the trail, I found myself automatically going there, found that I could think more clearly there, that I felt close to God there, that it was a place of comfort.
At one point while I was sitting on the floor, just letting my mind drift, the thought came to me that this poor office that I had been avoiding was a lot like me. I sometimes lock parts of myself up because I am afraid of what I will find there, or afraid that I will find nothing there. Just as the office is affected by street noise or the weather, I, too, let certain forces in the world affect me, and as I avoid the office, I sometimes shut myself down so that I can't be hurt by these influences.
Embracing my office has given me a place to remember God. Somehow the hours I spent praying there during Ramadan carved a new notch into my mental schema of our apartment. Now, like a scent recalls an obscure memory, the office sometimes takes me back to moments of prayerfulness, without much current effort on my part.
It has also given me hope and compassion for those parts of myself that I have been ignoring. If I have the courage to do what I feel called to do in my office, then why not with my life? If I can rewire my feelings about a room, then how about rewiring positive thoughts about myself over negative ones?
I thank God for my time spent in worship this Ramadan, and for the opportunity to make friends with parts of my environment and myself that I had been avoiding for a long time.
It is my shameful secret that my office is the least used room in our apartment. When we moved to an apartment with an extra room, my husband generously agreed to give it to me, to encourage my writing. (He crammed his own broken desk and bookcase into a nook next to the cat litter box.) We fixed up my office with the better desk, two bookcases, relaxing landscape painting, plush rug, and so forth. Then we looked on with approval and left the room.
That was a year and a half ago, and I would sometimes venture in, engage in a fevered bout of writing, stash the notebook in a bookcase, and skulk out. The room is very noisy in summer and very very cold in winter. We use it as a guest room--I pretend to be out of sorts when I am denied the use of my personal writing space for those few days when someone stays there.
But this Ramadan, I made my presence felt in that room, and made it a more inviting place. At first, I had to force myself to pray and meditate there, instead of in the living room. But as I cleared the brush and paved the trail, I found myself automatically going there, found that I could think more clearly there, that I felt close to God there, that it was a place of comfort.
At one point while I was sitting on the floor, just letting my mind drift, the thought came to me that this poor office that I had been avoiding was a lot like me. I sometimes lock parts of myself up because I am afraid of what I will find there, or afraid that I will find nothing there. Just as the office is affected by street noise or the weather, I, too, let certain forces in the world affect me, and as I avoid the office, I sometimes shut myself down so that I can't be hurt by these influences.
Embracing my office has given me a place to remember God. Somehow the hours I spent praying there during Ramadan carved a new notch into my mental schema of our apartment. Now, like a scent recalls an obscure memory, the office sometimes takes me back to moments of prayerfulness, without much current effort on my part.
It has also given me hope and compassion for those parts of myself that I have been ignoring. If I have the courage to do what I feel called to do in my office, then why not with my life? If I can rewire my feelings about a room, then how about rewiring positive thoughts about myself over negative ones?
I thank God for my time spent in worship this Ramadan, and for the opportunity to make friends with parts of my environment and myself that I had been avoiding for a long time.
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