not a conundrum

 

It caught my eye. From a Roman Catholic retreat website, "Is God luring you out into the desert?"

Much earlier than I'd hoped for a sleepy Saturday, this predawn morning I woke from another of a recent spate of anxiety dreams, into the blinding flash and explosive bang of a thunderstorm. 

So, stumblingly up and turn on my coffee. Sacrifice to Father Nature, back, and it's brewed hot & black ready to sit down at my bayside window and, still rattled, sip from my magic mug, watching as the thunderstorm flashes and rages through. 

Why the anxiety dreams? 

I've not spoken to you lately, but I'm wondering: why these unsettling anxiety dreams? Once, forty years ago, an answer came, "I AM speaking to you, Tom Weller," I don't expect that ever again, but I'll try to relax and figure what comes.

Some years ago - - it was Spring 2008, I participated in an eight-day retreat called Credo. The "national church" offered them for Episcopal clergy by invitation, this one styled for retiring or recently retired Episcopal priests. I was 72, about average for the group, a few of the men were late sixties, some mid-seventies. 

A key message from start to finish was "It's Time" - - to start letting go, and conditioning us to ease into that, letting go. Of our self-identities as parish priests, an ID that can be very strong. By then I had been officially retired and on the retired rolls for nine years, but never really. The bishop'd always called. Even at the Time (2004 to 2009) I was priest in charge, vicar, of a local area parish as a retired priest. And even before that five-year stint ended, I was invited back to Holy Nativity, for a third term as Priest Associate. Calculating, it's where I've spent most of my years of ordained ministry. I'm pretty used to it, settled into it. 

From May 2009, it's finishing up the end of May 2024. Apparently, I'm more anxious about that ending than I realized, because of course that's the reason for the succession of anxiety dreams. Thank you, Lord! This Time, at 88&c, it's for real, I'll work at relaxing into it and letting it go. How to do that, make that mental, emotional transition in extreme old age? I'll have to change something significant. 

With the rector's encouragement, I've already been changing my Sunday morning routine; first letting go of leading the adult Sunday school class.  More recently, transitioning from liturgical roles into the pew with Linda. What? not retire into an RC or Episcopal monastery. But change my self-ID.

When we arrived in Apalachicola the summer of 1984, I was a few years retired from the Navy. I'd managed to let it go, most consciously on my 45th birthday, the day I started theological seminary after having avoided it for so many years: I was someone new. Now I have that self-ID. Anyway, at Trinity, I had a friend and Sunday morning helper who was also a retired Navy commander - - he'd been skipper of a "boomer" a Navy SSBN. Some years later I called him "Commander" to his surprise, and asked him if he ever thought about or missed those days. He said he did not, "I let all that go and've never looked back." I've not done that well, I often wear a Navy retired officer hat with scrambled eggs on the brim, the bill. I feel comfortable being saluted into the gate at Tyndall. I think I'll keep on keeping on with that. But this other self-ID, how to be shed of it? 

Languages fascinate me, especially German, Hebrew and Greek. Months ago, I enrolled in a German language course with its teacher in Germany, and though it's my own pace and I've done it real slow, I've nothing to do with it. I can sort through my collection of old car brochures, but I really don't want to do that. I've done Credo and've been invited back; and I've done silent retreats at RC retreat centers, and've been invited back; but Linda and I both have age-related health issues that mean we need to be here to look after each other, so I'm not going off anywhere.

What, then? Relax and watch water traffic on St Andrews Bay? Relax and read? Blog, write these blogposts? Go across the street to eat oysters and mullet? Fine, but the CHF is such now that I can't walk it, have to drive. What? Bucket-list included return to Maine and explore the little up bay town my Weller ancestors settled in from Germany. Explore Germany. Alaska cruise. But not interested, no longer interested in traveling except maybe to Apalachicola once or twice a year. Seldom or never "cross the bridge" to PCB, driving to Tyndall AFB and back is our idea of travel anymore. What? What, dammit?

Mind, I don't need to be saved from this. I'm not looking for suggestions. I do not need advice. I don't even need to be heard. I just need to sound off. If a tree falls in a forest, and there's no one around to hear it, does the falling tree make a sound?

Vibrations radiated, yes. Eardrums vibrating, no.

T88&c

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clipart: thanks, Fritz Ahlsfeldt