"I bet you can't wait to go to sleep … "

I woke up a week ago with five perfectly parallel scratches on my shoulder. They're deep enough to have lasted a week. They're too close together to be from my own fingernails. They rather resemble a cat's scratch, but I do not own a cat. Unless I somehow managed to drag a very sharp fork (with five tines) over my shoulder while I slept, I have no idea from where they came.

I dreamed I got my tattoo a few nights ago, too. Perhaps the same night. It didn't hurt as much as I expect it to.

Last night I dreamed about driving around rural Iowa, trying to make my way toward Dubuque. After stopping to ask for directions and taking a wrong turn down a dirt road, I eventually reached that riverside city. But I couldn't find the person for whom I was looking.

Later, I dreamed I was at Navy Pier with my parents. J. walked in the doors, said "Welcome back" and disappeared around a corner. I went after him, but he was gone.

This is the second time I've had a variation on a "searching Dubuque" dream. I have vehicular dreams that indicate anxiety, but I have no idea what the unfufilling search means.

Minnie Driver sings

Just paging through my most recent copy of No Depression, and there's a half-page ad for the debut album from … Minnie Driver? Hmmm. Anyone know if she's any good? I think she's a great actress (everything from Princess Mononoke to Return to Me to Grosse Pointe Blank), but ... Bruce Springsteen covers?

Church basements

(Tonight's workout accompaniment: TBA)

This past weekend I was invited to the Midwest Buddhist Temple to give a presentation to the board of trustees of the Council for a Parliament of World's Religions.

I felt greatly honored to have been invited. I was very nervous the entire week before. I wrote a 10-page speech, arrived an hour early and practiced in my car for 15 minutes before I worked up the courage to enter.

I had to buzz in, and the chair of the board sent an employee of the organization to let me in.

As I followed him to the social hall, the anxiety lifted. Why? Because this particular Buddhist church basement looked pretty much exactly like a Protestant church basement, except there were karate trophies instead of bowling trophies on the coat rack.

And the presentation was fine.

Apophatic

(Today's workout accompaniment: NPR Saturday programming)

There's a religious concept I love called "apophatic theology." Its premise is that anything we can say about God is more false than true.

If you're a pessimist, there's little reason to love apophatic theology. Because it means we can never understand the divine. But if you're an optimist, it means there's always more. Apophatic theology means everything we say must be qualified by "so much more than …."

For example, Christians believe that God is love. An apophatic Christian would say that God is so much more than love.

The past few weeks have been apophatic than me. They've been "so much more" good, "so much more" stressful and "so much more" surprising than the mere vocabularly I possess can express.

How can I wrap everything into a single blog posting? I won't even try.