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I saw him hitchhiking on the shoulder of I-35 the other day. He was walking with his back to the traffic and with his left thumb stuck out. This was just north of San Antonio, right near the town of Selma where the old city hall is now a Hooters restaurant, and the only remaining residential street was cut in half rudely by the interstate in the late 60s, leaving a string of tattered houses on either side.

He was wearing black, of course. So melodramatic. I had to laugh.

I pulled onto the shoulder, driving slowly alongside him. He refused to acknowledge me. I stretched over as far as I could, with my left hand still on the wheel, and rolled down the passenger-side window.

“I know you see me. Why don’t you go ahead and get in. I’ll give you a ride to wherever the hell it is you think you’re going.”

He kept walking. I kept the car moving right alongside him. Finally he stopped, exhaled dramatically, and looked at me over the top of his glasses.

“You haven’t been returning my calls.”

I wasn’t much in the mood to take his shit.

“Yeah, well I’m the one who has three kids and a couple of REAL jobs. It’s not like I can just jump out of bed whenever you call and sit up all night writing everything down. I mean, we have to sleep. You people don’t seem to understand that.”

He stuck out his lower lip in an exaggerated pout and mimed playing a violin while making a whiny noise. “Mi mi mi mi mi mi mi.”

I tried not to laugh, but I couldn’t help myself.

“So are you gonna get in or what?”

He looked far up the road, as if he was weighing his options. I groaned and laid my head back on the headrest, looking up at the headliner. He has no options. He has to get in the car. I know that. He knows that. Always with the drama, this guy.

“Okay, but I want French toast.”

He climbed into the car before I could reply.

“French toast? It’s like 1:30. I just ate lunch.”

“I have two words for you. French. Toast.”

I paused for a few moments, looking at him. He looked back, very confident. He knows I’m going to take him wherever he wants to go.

“Yeah, all right.”

“Go to Jim’s,” he said. “They have the good diet cokes in those classic coke-shaped glasses. And they have limes.”

I took the next exit and made a U-turn, heading back to town. We drove in silence for a bit. I sure as hell wasn’t going to be the first to speak. That’s his job. Finally he said something.

“Do you even remember any of them?”

“Sure, of course. Listen, I totally respect your work, man. It’s just I’m so tired. Seriously, sometimes I just can’t bring myself to get out of bed and get my notebook. But lately, you’ve done some amazing stuff.”

He smiled and fiddled with the radio knobs.

“Did you like Wednesday night’s?”

“Um, was that the one with the llama from Napoleon Dynamite, and I was like a sheriff or something?”

“No, that was last week. I’ll give you a hint. Waterrrrrr….”

“Oh yeah, the island dream!”

“Bingo. What did you think?”

“Oh, I loved it. That was nice. Very cool images. The island, that was from Perelandra, right? That’s how I pictured it while I was reading.”

“Yes.”

“I knew it. And that little city with the winding, medieval streets. That was from Matt’s book, Midwinter, right? The floating city.”

He nodded.

“Okay, so who is that woman anyway?”

“You know her. She’s your muse, your other voice, your anima, your inspiration, your…”

“Yeah, fine, right. I read Jung.”

“You really should listen to her, you know.”

“Well, she’s pretty pushy and…” I paused. “Between you and me, she can be pretty racy. It’s kind of embarrassing.”

“Hey, you don’t have to tell me. I wrote, produced, and directed all of them. Listen, we’re not held back by your prudish, Judeo-Christian so-called ethics. Paganism still rules on the dark side, my friend. Old school.”

“Whatever.”

I pulled into the Jim’s parking lot and we got out. My door slammed just a second before his. I held open the door for him and we sat across from each other in a booth. He picked up a menu and didn’t look up when the waitress arrived. She looked at him, then at me.

“He’ll have an order of French toast. No powdered sugar, but bring extra syrup. Link sausages and a diet coke with a lime in it.”

The waitress scribbled on her pad. “And for you?”

“I already ate. Just give me a diet coke. Also with a lime.”

She returned with our diet cokes a minute or two later. He peeled off the end of the paper wrapper on his straw, put the open end in his mouth, and shot the wrapper at me across the table. He always does that, and I never acknowledge it. I just close my eyes when it hits me in the face, then open them and go right on with the conversation.

He took a long pull from his straw and got right to it.

“Listen, who do you think you are?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean exactly what I said. Just who do you think you are?”

“I don’t know how to answer that question.”

“Exactly! And that’s why I’m here today. Listen to me. I’m serious now. Listen.”

He leaned forward and motioned with his hand for me to lean forward as well. When he spoke, it was in a whisper.

“Your whole life has become like a house of cards. All masks. All roles, do you get me? Husband, father, preacher, pastor, writer, good Christian boy, friend to the needy, everything that everyone who meets you needs you to be. You can’t keep it up. Do you understand me? You’re going to get yourself into some serious trouble.”

“I don’t know what to do. I can’t stop being any of those things.”

“I know, that’s why I’m here. Just listen to me.”

“Okay, I’m listening.”

“Look, I’m all for your doctor and the little white pills. That’s fine, but that’s not the only thing that’s going on, okay? Don’t buy into that chemical, pharmacological, bullshit worldview. That stuff helps, but it’s not the only thing. Do you get what I’m saying?”

I nodded.

“Listen to her. Don’t disrespect her.”

“Ugh, I hate that.”

“What?”

“When people use disrespect as a verb. It’s like fingernails on a chalkboard.”

He sighed and looked up at the ceiling, then back at me.

“Fine, don’t be disrespectful to her. I don’t care how you want to say it, but she’s speaking to you right now like never before. Every night. When you drive around and think about all that stuff and talk to yourself, that’s her speaking. You listen. And I don’t care about your sleep or any of that. Just listen to her.”

“Okay, but then what do I do?”

“You don’t need to know any of that. You just listen.”

The waitress returned with two fresh cokes and his French toast. She laid the plate in front of him and he dug right in. I caught her eye and said, “Thank you very much.”

He flooded his French toast with syrup. I winced. He picked up one of the link sausages with his left hand and took a bite out of it. While he chewed he swabbed a piece of toast around in the syrup with his fork, then popped it neatly into his mouth between chews. He spoke with his mouth full of food.

Zuh Thying is, Sees got you, gyot a hode of you.”

He swallowed, pointed his fork at me, and continued.

“You gotta remember that all of us down below, we never lie. We tell the truth. It’s all we know how to do. You people up here...”  He waved his fork around, sending drops of syrup flying. “You people are all liars. You can’t help it, poor saps, but you lie to yourselves all the time.”

“So once again I’m to believe that you came all the way out here for my own good. Just because you care about me or love me or whatever.”

We stared at each other for a moment while he chewed and swallowed a massive bite. His head tilted a little to one side, then he reached out his hand and gently pressed his palm to my cheek.

“Of course I love you. Of all the loves you will experience in this life, mine is the most true. Because I know you inside and out, all the way to the bottom and back up. In and out, up and down, light and dark. You’re a little too preoccupied with yourself sometimes, but you’re precious. I adore you.”

I stared into the top of my diet coke, stirring the soggy lime wedge with my straw. I nodded.

“Okay, tell her I’m trying to listen. I am. I mean, I will."

"Good!" he said, snapping his head down quickly in one sharp nod before turning his full attention back to the French toast. "That's all we ask of you."

rlp

 

The exterior of my house is very pleasing to the eye. It’s a modest, prairie home that is aging well and is comforting to look at. The porch is large, with chairs and a couple of swings. On the porch I am the perfect host - chatting, making people feel welcome, and carrying drinks around on a little tray. I’m very engaged in the conversations, actively listening, and moving smoothly from one group to the next.

People like the outside of my house and the front porch. I take great pride in that.

But I don’t invite many people inside my house. I need to know you pretty well before I let you see the interior, though I do have a variety of photo albums available on the porch. These photos are a carefully chosen selection from the various rooms inside my house. I’ve included a few safe, but slightly intimate photos of my private rooms, so that you’ll almost think you’ve been inside.

“Wow, these are great photos,” someone on the porch says. “So intimate and beautiful and daring.”

“Thank you,” I say with a big smile. “More lemonade?”

The people I allow inside are surprised to find that the interior looks nothing like what you’d expect in a prairie home. Through the front door is a large, open room that looks like a warehouse. Mounds of papers, books, and dirty plates cover the tops of tables and desks. Even some of the chairs have things stacked on them. Here and there are half-finished projects, some buried under piles of financial statements, unused calendars, and receipts. There is sawdust and trash all over the floor. Everywhere you look there are chewed pencils.

In the warehouse I rush back and forth in a mad panic, slapping things together, scribbling on papers, and stuffing things into envelopes. A phone is cradled on my shoulder, and I am shouting apologies into it. These apologies are as messy as the room, stitched together with lies and half-truths.

If I see you in my warehouse, I am deeply embarrassed and want to hustle you out of there as quickly as possible. I want everyone to think that things are as calm and peaceful inside as they are on the porch.

There is a door in one wall of the warehouse that leads to the family room, which is a kind of secret club. There is a very large lock on this door. Jeanene and I and the three sisters are the only ones with keys. Occasionally one of the girls rushes through the front door, dashes across the warehouse, and fumbles with the lock while looking over her shoulder in a panic. When the door opens, she slips inside with an audible sigh of relief.

One corner of the warehouse is more cluttered than the rest of the room. As you approach it, the mess gets more extreme until you think it can’t get any worse. Then you see the hidden, circular staircase that leads to a room below. Soft music floats up the stairs along with scents of patchouli and rosemary. Flickering lights from a fireplace below leap out of the hole in the floor and beckon to you to enter.

The stairs lead to my sanctuary. Because of the chaos above, it is astonishing that this room is perfectly neat and tidy, though it is obviously well used. Famous paintings are on the walls, and elegant, wooden shelves are filled with fine books with leather covers. The couches in front of the fireplace look deliciously comfortable, and you can smell pipe tobacco coming from tins on the mantel.

There is a home theater in one corner with a fabulous collection of movies and music. Fountain pens, inkwells, and heavy paper sit neatly on several wooden desks. All of my writing is done in this room. Finished works are stored here in perfectly organized filing cabinets.

I’m very proud of this room. In truth, it is the room I hope most defines me. When people visit here, I look up and acknowledge their presence, then go back to whatever I was doing. I sometimes find it difficult to engage people in my sanctuary; indeed I can barely hear their voices.

There is a circular, hobbit door in one wall of the sanctuary. It leads to a different sanctuary, one I abandoned in 1984. This room is filled with juvenile literature, science fiction, a record player, and an astonishing variety of sporting equipment. There are beanbag chairs all around and shag carpet. 70s and 80s rock and roll posters fill the walls. On one wall there are some framed pictures of girls in prom dresses. Their names are carefully carved into the frames. The colors of these photographs are fading, but they were clearly hung, long ago, in a place of honor and with great care.

Last year I entered this room for the first time in many years. I looked around a bit, smiled at the pictures of the girls, and then gasped when I saw my worn and beloved baseball mitt. I picked it up, smelled it, and took it with me when I left.

There is also a secret door in my sanctuary. If you push a hidden lever near the fireplace, a bookcase pops open to reveal a hidden room. There is only one person who knows how to push this lever. When she enters the room, her eyes sweep across the walls and shelves and then grow wide. She giggles and puts her hand over her mouth. Something on the other side of the room catches her eye. She stares at it intently. Her head tilts a little, and she squints. A smile slowly grows on her face. It is the Mona Lisa smile of a woman who knows that she is the one.

In the far wall of my hidden room is a door that has wedges and spikes pounded under it and around the edges. The door itself is scarred and splintered in places. It looks as though there has been a fight over whether to open it or keep it closed. From inside there is a furious pounding. Someone wants to come out. Someone selfish and extremely sensual, someone rude and very indulgent. Someone who would sacrifice anything for the pleasure of the moment. He needs pleasure, and he doesn’t give a damn about anything or anyone else. He’s angry as hell to be locked inside. You can hear him howling at night. And he swears that one day he will have his revenge.

On the floor, in a corner of my sanctuary, there is a heavy, wooden trap door. In the center is a black, iron ring. This is the door to the caverns beneath my house. It is very difficult to open this door. It takes a lot of courage and an enormous amount of strength. You have to grab the ring and pull with all your might. But sometimes this door pops open by itself, especially at night. If you walk by and find that it is open, it will slam shut as soon as you approach it.

Below the trapdoor are steps leading down into the darkness. Mysterious and frightening sounds rise from below. There is the sound of running water, the insane laughter of demons and lunatics, and grinding noises, like large gears slowly turning. Sometimes you hear the groans of slaves and prisoners who are apparently trapped below the house.

I’ve only gained the strength to open the trapdoor in the last ten years or so. In 2002 I began opening it regularly and going down the stairs. I bring up strange artifacts and set them on the mantle, where I puff away at my pipe and gaze at them in wonder. Sometimes I write about the things I find below. But it’s hard because when you write about what’s below, you cannot pass judgment. You can only describe what you have found. So many people do not understand that.

There are many other doors in the house. Some I have opened and others I have not. There is even a mysterious hallway that leads out of the house to places unknown. I do not know this house yet, but I am exploring more of it with each passing year.

These days a lot of people have been stopping by my front porch. The photos are there, of course, but lately I’ve been going down to the sanctuary and bringing up things I have written. I nail them to my front door or leave them on tables beside the swings. Sometimes I look out the window and am amazed to find that people are reading my work. All of it. Every blessed word.

A dear friend, one who spends time with me in front of the fireplace, recently asked me where God was to be found in my house. I tamped tobacco into the bowl of a simple wooden pipe and considered the question.

“It has taken me many years to discover the answer to that puzzle,” I say while lighting the pipe.

“As it turns out, God can be found in every room in this house. In all of them. And I am slowly learning to be comfortable with that.”

rlp

Prairie style home

 

Shortly after reading “Memories, Dreams, Reflections,” by C.G. Jung, I tried a free association fantasy exercise. I found a comfortable place to sit and breathed carefully until I was fully relaxed. Then I let my mind follow whatever images and thoughts came to me. I imagined that I dove off a high cliff into the ocean. I could see easily under water and had no trouble breathing. Using an overhand stroke I began to claw my way toward the ocean floor which was covered in a very thick forest of kelp. When I reached the kelp, there was room between the strands for me to make my way toward the bottom, though the going was hard. I don’t know why I wanted to go to the bottom, but I had a great desire to see it. After a few moments of fighting with the kelp and making some progress, a loud, angry voice said, “NO!”

Have you ever been on the edge of sleep when suddenly a voice startled you awake? At first you can’t be sure if you heard it or thought it. This voice was like that. The intensity of it frightened me. I opened my eyes and the daydream was gone.

What is this voice? Whose voice is it? I’m certainly aware of the names people have given to it. Some say it is the devil. Others would say it was only my lively imagination. Still others claim that we have a secondary consciousness, a part of the mind that works like a production company, creating dreams and casting them with characters and images from our lives that have symbolic meaning for us.

If that last scenario is true, I suppose I was about to see something that my production company wasn’t ready to release in my dream theater. My intrusion on the set obviously pissed someone off, and they had security throw me out.

In case you’re wondering, I lean toward the idea of the subconscious mind, but I will humbly admit that I don’t know where the voice comes from or whose voice it is.

Sam Todd taught me this particular kind of humility.

Until 1998 I thought the devil was a very unsophisticated idea, some kind of leftover image from the middle ages. As far as I was concerned, Satan was a convenient scapegoat for people who would not take responsibility for their own lives.

But then I met Sam.

Sam was an Episcopal priest (I assume he still is) who was the rector at a church I frequented in those days. I studied in their library, walked their grounds, and occasionally sneaked into their sanctuary for a quick nap on the back row. Sam was a very learned man who read deeply and broadly. He smoked a pipe and was a beautiful writer. I would pick up his sermon manuscripts from the table at the back and read them with great appreciation. He knew how to find the hot spot in a text and take you there before you knew what was happening to you. That’s good preaching.

It was Sam who introduced me to the idea of spiritual direction, and he was my spiritual director until he left for a church in Houston. And that’s the last I’ve heard of him. I wish that he would read this, but I’ll just leave that up to chance, or fate, or providence. Whatever you want to call it.

Sam told me that each year he took a retreat of silence at a monastery near the coast. He said the first 48 hours were the worst. Unable to bear the silence, his mind turned inward, and he would berate himself mercilessly about his sins and weaknesses. He felt like he was under assault. He said it was as if there was another voice inside of him.

“Yeah, I think I know that voice,” I said.

Sam looked very seriously at me and said without hesitation, “It is the voice of our ancient foe.”

He wasn’t embarrassed and he made no apologies. He didn’t try to analyze his statement or explain it away. He offered no caveats or disclaimers. He just said it and looked at me quietly. And because it was Sam, suddenly the idea of Satan didn’t embarrass me or make me laugh. It didn’t sound like a silly, fairy tale. The whole thing was a little scary, to tell you the truth.

I still don’t know where the voice comes from, but I do believe in the existence of the voice, and this voice is, without a doubt, my ancient foe. No matter how happy and healthy I am, there is a voice that calls me back to things that are not good for me, things that don’t even bring me pleasure. It’s like eating an entire bag of Cheetos while you’re watching a movie. You do not enjoy the last three fourths of the bag, but something tells you to keep eating. And you do.

This voice contains the hollow echoes of past regrets and bad memories, but it is compelling nonetheless.

When Jesus encounters the demonic in the pages of the Gospels, he often demands to know the name of the evil spirit. In the ancient world, knowing someone’s name gave you a certain power over them. It still does, by the way. If you know someone’s name and call it out loudly in a crowd, that person will stop, turn around, and look at you.

The spirits did not want Jesus to know them. In the Gospel According to Mark, a spirit saw Jesus and shouted out these very haunting and grammatically strange words:

“What to us and to you, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know you who you are.”

That’s a literal translation from the original Greek. For some reason the particular construct of those two sentences has always scared the hell out of me.

If you pushed me and asked me to give this voice a name, I still would not be able to do so. I’m like a lot of liberalish, educated people. I’m uncomfortable with black-and-white ethics and simple answers. So I cannot yet name this voice. Perhaps that is why I ultimately cannot defeat it.

The Christian spiritual path begins with stark humility. It begins with an admission that the voice has haunted you and that you have not been able to overcome it. If ours was a 12-step program, step two would be admitting that a power greater than yourself will have to help you deal with the voice.

Steps 3 to 5 would walk you through the shocking discovery of just how much this transaction costs. That's where the whole business of an innocent person dying for another comes in. Like Aslan in "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe." The rest of the steps would have to do with discovering how all of this will change your life in ways that were impossible before.

As I move slowly through the days of my life, loving my family, working for my daily bread, and walking in faith with my friends at our little church, I often remember Sam Todd leaning back in his chair with his pipe in his hand, naming demons without fear.

“It is the voice of our ancient foe,” he said.

Sam said that to me.

rlp

I had a powerful and vivid dream a couple of months ago. I woke up and wrote it down. The feelings from that dream remain vivid in my memory even now. The dream had two distinct parts, both set in an unnamed Islamic country.

In the first part of the dream I was a young, Islamic boy who was too immature to care about the lives or feelings of others. Another boy loaned me his most beloved possession, a pair of binoculars with plastic caps for the lenses and a nice leather case.

I was not very careful with the binoculars. After using them, I hurriedly put them back in their case without putting the covers on the lenses. Before climbing down an embankment of some sort, I lazily dropped the case and some books of mine to the bottom so that climbing down would be easier for me.

My books were fine, but the binoculars were ruined. They were the only thing of value the other boy owned, and he cried out, grieving for his loss.

Suddenly I was filled with remorse for my actions as I understood for the first time what it meant to hurt another person. I lost the friendship but grew in wisdom. After that I was able to laugh and play peacefully with other children in the village.

This part of the dream ended with a mysterious old woman praising me for my newfound ability to care for others.

In the second dream sequence, I was a Christian minister visiting in the same Islamic country. I went into a mosque that was almost empty of worshippers. I spoke with the Imam and a number of the elderly people. They were very sad and grieving the fact that their mosques were empty and the younger generation was drifting away from their historic faith.

I left the mosque and sat on the slope of a small hill with a group of Imams and their students. In this part of the dream I kept my Christianity hidden, trying to blend in with the others.

They were reading from an ancient book of scripture. Its pages were made of very thin sheets of stone carved with mysterious looking runes. The rune letters were exceedingly beautiful, so that it was wonderful for me just to gaze at them. When I confessed that I did not know the language of the book, they were shocked and filled with grief for me. They wondered how I could be in spiritual training if I didn’t know the sacred language.

I tried to follow along in the text as an old Imam read aloud, for some of the runes looked rather like Hebrew letters. But the real meaning of the words was contained in the pictures or symbols that the letters formed, as is true with Chinese. Slowly my understanding of the language grew until I could read a little of it. In that moment I was filled with a joy that is beyond any joy I have ever felt in real life. There is no way to describe the purity and delight that I felt. It was as if I was standing before the throne of eternal truth, my long journey over. I burst into tears and ran forward, weeping and telling everyone that I had learned to read.

Even though I was far behind the others, I had no shame. And even though they were far beyond me, they rejoiced in my small step forward. The happiness that filled me was a complete consummation. I was consumed by it.

The Imams and students and people of the village were so happy for me that they threw beautiful, colored pieces of paper that rained down upon me like confetti. I learned that this celebration was also a part of their spiritual tradition, and I was filled with love for such a people who would rejoice so passionately at a stranger’s first steps toward enlightenment.

I do not know what this dream means. I do not have to know what it means.

As myths are to humanity, so dreams are to the individual. No one knows where they come from or exactly what they mean. But we cannot live meaningful lives without them. Deprive an individual of his dreaming, and he becomes psychotic. Deprive a culture of its myths, and the people lose their identity. They begin to lose touch with the deep and old forces that created them. Without myth, society itself becomes psychotic.

I do not have to understand my dreams for them to move me and change me. I only have to receive them, take them seriously, enjoy them, think about them, delight in them, or in some cases be horrified by them. This is the way of dreaming. One receives a dream and is changed in subtle and even subconscious ways.

At night we lay ourselves down and are plugged into a source that we do not know. You may name this source if you wish. You may call it God or the collective unconscious. You may even deny the presence of an intelligence beyond your own and claim to be the source of your own dreams. But you will dream, and a part of you is receiving these messages. This is not something you can control.

Think of them however you will, but do not neglect your dreams. Listen to them. Hear them. Know them. Do not be afraid of them.

Dreaming is one of the ways that we learn what it means to be human.

rlp

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