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We were discussing dreams.
We all have them. Not all of us remember them.
Do they all mean something? Possibly not.
Could it be, do you think, that these seemingly random wanderings of the subconscious mind have (at least part of the time) real significance?
The song lyrics quoted above are from a dream I had some months after my dad died. An audio dream. No visuals at all, just this song as if I were hearing on the radio.
Rodney and I sat up all night playing music on the night our father died. "Wish you were here" seemed to have special import to us and we played it twice.
But it was the first line which haunted my dream, months later.
As though I could hear my dad's voice repeating that line as it played.
I was an infidel, you see.
That line reverberated like a warning; do you really think you can tell "heaven from hell," you who know so little (if anything) about either?
You may call me a mystic or merely superstitious. I call it a beginning.
Within a few more months, my friend Frank came to work at Union City Ford and we began to talk.
There is this verse which may or may not have meaning for this situation. I think of it often:
"...your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions." Joel 2:28b, Acts 2:17b
Are you hearing this song, Little Brother? Wish you were here and I pray the Lord that He send you a true friend.
On this Saturday past, I stood at the highest point in Maple Hill Cemetery, overlooking the Mississippi River as it flowed past Helena, Arkansas.
Gathered there with my oldest daughter and myself was a small group of people come to pay tribute to Patrick Ronayne Cleburne on the day before his birthday.
Though a son of Ireland, he was also a son of the South and so akin to the sons and daughters who had come to remember him.
The speaker related Cleburne's life story and his service to his adopted home. But he also spoke of those traditions and values which bind us together.
My mind wandered and I reflected on the reasons I had come home; to renew old acquaintances, to see the old places once more, but most of all, to strengthen and renew family ties strained (if that is the right word) by time and distance.
The next day we worshipped in the church where I grew up, sitting in the pew with a memorial plaque bearing my father's name.
God blessed this past weekend, as He often does, above and beyond what I had asked or expected.
I am grateful for the home where I have lived for the past thirty years and all those who are and have been part of my life there.
But I am so thankful also for the place from which I came, and the people who made and continue to make that place special in my heart.
As the song says, Old times there are not forgotten.
