vendredi 29 janvier 2010

January 30, 2010 : I must be dreaming...

Bonjour!

I hate this. Okay, I hate this but I love it. I woke up at 4:22am this morning and couldn't get back to sleep. It sort of feels like I am still in my last dream though, which is good because it means I may have a shot at getting back to sleep after I write what needs writing. :-)

So, dreams. I bought a book on dreams, how to get your bang for the buck: dreams, what they mean, how to interpret them and then use them in waking life. And I plan on reading that book some day. Really I do!

Until then, I've got theories. Lots and lots of theories. I like the one that says if I wake up tired it is because my soul was up all night helping poor "lost" souls cross over. I like that idea. I like to be cast as the hero. I prefer it to thinking my soul was out all night carousing and so too bad for me, I have to just tough it out today. (Which would be, I admit, a rather ironic form of justice, I suppose...)

I also like the theory that dreams are our most profound self's way of dealing. Of sorting out the overwhelm. Of sifting the wheat from the chaff, sorting out the dross, you get the idea. Of helping the daytime "me" - who is purported to have fewer resources (not sure about that) and less time (strong likelihood) - get a grip in the world of walking around.

And the mystic in me who takes after my mother's mother (who read tea leaves for neighbors, who knew?) likes very much the idea that dreamtime is an in-between time, a neither-here-nor-there place, where almost anything can happen.

So this morning I woke up dreaming about Msgr. Doherty. I was back in the Catholic parish of my youth - St. John's in the Bronx - and Msgr. was the pastor again. He was trying to figure out FaceBook (to which I admit a teeny-tiny addiction), so that he could communicate better with the (young?) people on the parish. He asked me to help him, and I said yes. Then I woke up and wanted to - had to - write this blog on dreaming. At 4:22am.

As I woke up more and more (my laptop takes a while to warm up in the morning, probably saying "why doesn't she #$%^&*@) sleep like normal people?"), I remembered that Msgr. passed away recently. Real recently, like 2 weeks ago, may he RIP. I was sad not to go to the service, held at his last parish, St. Gabe's. He was a man who touched many lives, including mine.

I remember I was sort of afraid of him when I worked answering phones at the rectory - and I wasn't the only one. But though it was true he could give the impression of a rough exterior (when he wanted to, I suspect), and was a hardliner on church teachings (definitely), he was secretly doing good deeds for a lot of families in the parish - something I discovered only a couple of years ago. That impressed me, in an age where no good deed goes unpublished.

He helped my family too, in very personal ways. When I was a student at Georgetown, he was invited to say the opening prayer at Congress and had the right to bring a guest. He contacted me, and took me along with him, picking me up at the center quad in a shiny black car, VIP all the way. He took me to lunch afterward, and then he gave me money after lunch (he knew I was working my way through school), a stipend he had been given by a parishioner. It was greatly needed, and is still greatly appreciated.

Msgr. also helped my Dad when he got sick, when Dad really didn't feel comfortable confiding in to anyone else. And this he kept on doing, well after St. John's, St. Gabe's and after he retired, when his ministry had "ended", through almost to the end, when by "chance" my parents and Msgr. lived only steps from each other in Riverdale. My parents' apartment was right across from the retired priests' residence (now called the John Cardinal O'Connor residence, formerly the John Neumann residence for pre-seminarians).

So I send out a message of gratitude to this man for his service to my family and to all the lives he touched through the years. And then I let my mind wander on that point. "All the lives he touched". Holy crap! (Excuse me, Msgr!) He touched thousands of lives, tens of thousands!

Wasn't Msgr Doherty sort of the first blogger? Stay with me... Msgr wrote a column in the Catholic New York for decades. His was a human interest column, musings on faith and the movement of Spirit around us and through us. Not online, but still doing the blogging thing: a regular running commentary of his thoughts, brilliantly written (I think he added that part! lol), and accessible. What surprised me when I discovered his writing was its freshness, its humanity, no hiding the point behind big words or abstract theology. I think I truly met the man through his writing, and came to love him.

I last saw Msgr. last year when I went through NYC. Hi health had been failing, but he insisted on inviting my mother and I for lunch at the residence, entertaining as ever. He gave us a copy of his latest work, about the life of his immigrant mother "Walking with Gella, " in which traces her journey from Ireland to New York at the turn of the century. It could have been my grandmother's story, or the story of so many immigrants. Perhaps that is why he showed such great compassion - not always to the delight of the parishioners - to the Hispanic community in our parish.

He also showed us a piece he was working on for Catholic New York. And a book he had had published on the history of the place in which he was living. The man was a machine. The man was a writer.

And the man was one of the few who, upon learning that I had left a perfectly good job in a bank to live the life of a dreamer, a writer in Paris (a city he loved) said, "Wonderful!"

Thanks you, Msgr, for your support always, continuing through the inspiration for this piece. I will catch you later, in my dreams.

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