Crossing the Rubicon

Not until I watched the ridiculously overdone ROME series did I put two and two together: The Rubicon is river in Italy. Crossing was forbidden. Thus when Caesar crossed it, well there was hell to pay...really overwrought hell according to the HBO series.

Silly me. Being a history major I should have known this, but somehow that little fact didn't stick. I wonder how much else goes unstuck?

My dreams last night were all over the map, but the one that sticks ended with a huge house fire, an emaciated father standing with his almost dead young son in his arms, and the father shouting to the fire, "Take me, not my only begotten son!" And then the father collapsed and died. I didn't stay asleep long enough to know what happened to the son.

I can't even begin to imagine what that dream was about. Religiously themed dreams rarely populate my sleep, but this one was definitely religious. Except when I woke up from the dream, I kept thinking -- Who was God? The father with the son in his hands or the fire? I imagine many who question the foundations of Christianity have asked that very same question.

The dream has stayed with me this morning. Not in a bad way. Not even in a good way. It's just stuck -- images, sounds, and all -- unlike the factoid about the Rubicon.

Of course, now that I know about the Rubicon I'll not forget it. When things stick with me, it's hard to un-stick them and while that might seem like a good thing, it's not. At least, not always. They become tidbits I gnaw on at the weirdest times -- usually in the middle of the night -- and I have a hard time letting them lie flat. I pick at them constantly.

Perhaps my dream was informed by my late night reading -- Barbara Kingsolver's "Lacuna." I read a lot of the reviews before I purchased the book and most weren't glowing. Reviewers liked the book, but thought it lacked something and they kept comparing it to her other novels, particularly "Poisonwood Bible." That must be a bummer for Kingsolver. Kind of like a famous musician always asked to play their hits from 20 years ago. Does she always have to write that same novel over and over to get noticed?

I mean, I liked Poisonwood, but I also really liked "Prodigal Summer" -- so different from each other, but each with enough weight to draw me in and make me live the stories in my head even when I wasn't reading. Lacuna is very different and yet those images, the rhythm of the voices stick with me even when I'm doing the most mundane tasks.

Yesterday, I had to venture into Costco for some needed items. Costco is always overwhelming, but on a Saturday afternoon, it's stupefying. I survived simply by recalling the voice of Harrison Shepard, the storyteller in Kingsolver's book. His voice calms me only it's not his voice, it's really hers and that is why I find this novel as powerful and wonderful as her previous ones. The character is in my head and yesterday, while elbowing my cart through the crowded Costco isles, I thought about Mr. Shepard's voice (aka Ms. Kingsolver's) again and again. How does she do that, I kept thinking, how does she make me hear him, see him, feel him when all the while it's her?

I like it when things like this stick. It's a comfort. So it's hard for me to figure out how my religious dream of begotten sons connects to the soothing voice of Kingsolver's story. Maybe there is no connection and the psychic patchwork of dreams threaded these facts together until I was left with images of a dying father and a limp son falling perilously close to the flames.

I cannot make sense of what sticks and what doesn't. We each have our own Rubicons to cross, I suppose, I just wonder what hell I'm trying to pay.