Presby-Musings

The other day I was running late, and my day was shaping up to be tougher than it needed to be.  On my way out the door, I grumpily said to my kid, "90% of life is having to do things that you don't want to do... you better get used to it."   He just nodded and went back to playing video games.   It's easy to equate all of the things that are inconvenient to us, that thwart our plans, make our days stressful, our lives mundane as somehow outside of God's will.   Because God just wants me to be happy, right? The problem with this kind of thinking is that it reduces God to a happiness slot machine.  We throw enough effort into our faith to consider whatever we've done for God as an investment, coins that we've dropped into the machine.   And then when we pull the lever on this happiness slot machine and it doesn't work out for us, we not only feel like we might be outside of God's will, we also are tempted to wonder what the heck God is ...

I had this dream a few weeks ago, and I thought about writing it down. And then that evil thing that author Stephen Pressfield calls the " Resistance " thwarted me, and I put it off. But no longer.  This dream deserves to preserved in writing.  You'll see why in a moment. I should also add that it probably deserves to be analyzed by someone who does that sort of thing. At any rate, here is the dream in all of it's surreality.   I am in a cab in a city, which I think is Chicago ---at least that's what it feels like.  It's dark and the lights of the city are flashing by as we speed through the streets.  It looks like it has been raining, because the streets are sort of glistening like they do after it rains and the clouds move away.   I look over at the seat next to me in the cab and I realize that I am sitting next to the Dalai Lama .  This seems odd to me even in the dream, but I can't think of anything to say.  The Dalai Lama smile...