all who wander are not lost: on the road again...

Last night I had the strangest dream... or maybe it was early this morning. My father (deceased now for four years) and I were traveling together to an interview. A college interview? A job interview? Who knows? When I was a child I often rode with my dad during vacations when he had road trips. Later, we took a few long trips together to check out colleges. One journey, from Georgia to Wisconsin, brought me to Lakeland College for my freshman year of college. We stopped one night in Nashville and went to the old Grand Ole Opry, drove through cornfields and wheat fields, ate at small diners on blue highways, I asked him about his growing up, and eventually my parents dropped me off in Sheboygan, WI to 
begin my life beyond home. 

In this dream journey, we were both our actual ages (assuming my father was still alive, he would be 88 on this trip to my nearly 67 years.) Whatever the nature of the interview, my dad was waiting in an outer office while I talked about the significant influences on my life. "Mostly I played in a band during high school," I told the official. He was non-plussed and nodded distractedly before saying, "But what shaped your soul?" At first I was offended: I played a LOT of music in high school. Our band, and the various acoustic subsets of that band, gave me an identity and a social life. "What a dick head" I thought to myself in the dream. Some bourgeois bureaucrat who has no idea of the salvific power of rock and roll was judging me. But then I told him, "Well, remember we're talking about 1965-1970, ok? In 1968 my church youth group took a three week road trip to see the social ministries of the church. I turned 16 that year. Dr. King had just been assassinated, too. And in the Potter's House, a ministry of the Church of the Savior in DC to the artists of the counter culture, I sensed a call to ministry. The next year, 1969, we spent three weeks of the summer in Biloxi, MI as volunteers with the Back Bay Mission. And of course, don't forget our nearly monthly visits to NYC and the old Filmore East."

All of which lit up my interviewer - so much so that we spent the next hour talking about what I learned as a white, middle class kid traveling South as my dad sat contentedly listening in to our conversation. We spoke of dancing to James Brown on the radio with little black kids in DC three months after MLK had been assassinated. And what it meant for me to travel through the Deep South - and talk about the Civil Rights movement - with activists on the front line while sleeping in various church basements. Or hearing the Who debut "Tommy" at the Fillmore? Or Zappa and the Mothers? Or Country Joe and the Fish? Or an early incarnation of Paul Winter's Consort when the Kinks canceled? Or a young Buddy Guy and an old Albert King? 

And then I woke up. It took me a few minutes to figure out where I was: had this trip just happened? It felt so real. Was it just a dream - and if so what was this dream saying to me? And why now? All day I've been walking around with it playing over and over in my heart. I understand that dream journeys have something to do with the actual journey of life at this moment in time. Taking a trip suggests a quest for meaning and purpose as we live into our goals. Or at least that life currently holds some unique significance that is now unfolding. Dreams about fathers often involve exercising personal authority and autonomy. While dreams about a deceased father can be a warning. Or at least a call to pay attention to some unsettled business within. And an interviewer? One who asks questions and make connections? That presence is often called up as a reminder of our deepest potential. The interviewer also tests us as we discern what is truly significant.

In this dream I was at peace with my dad. I was also at peace with myself at this moment in time. In retirement many of my conflicts have been settled. My history with my father rests in contentment as we share the things we both love: grandchildren, children, stories, the creative arts and social justice. Some of the things that I once believed were essential have now been revealed to be incidental, while living into a tender but counter-cultural journey beyond the confines of my straight, while male heritage are invigorating and genuinely fascinating. It would seem that I am telling myself some things I have not been quite able to put into words: trust grace, trust tenderness, trust that God heals what I cannot control, trust the serenity of acceptance. And, trust that this trip into selling the house and moving on is true, right, holy and soul satisfying. I can't help but call up a tune from back in my Fillmore days from a band I heard often...