Soulful Muse

You excitedly run home with the news of a lifetime, “I got a part in a movie!”  You tell family and friends as they envy their small chance to ever, ever appear in a feature film.

So let’s reduce your life to a two-hour movie.  Blockbuster or flop, it doesn’t matter because it is your life on the big screen with popcorn-eating people, peeping Toms and the guy who has two hours to kill before going home.  (Oh well, so much for the audience.)

What role do you play?  I’m confident we’d all choose the hero but alas that falls to only one person.  (Audience can’t handle more than one protagonist.)  Are you that forgettable bartender (or cabby or waitress) who feeds the hero cocktails or self evident life tips until the hero’s crisis occurs?  How about the New York doorman who takes countless abuses from the hero but gives one great come-back line toward the end of the film?  Are you that gnawing in-law who yells at the hero because of your own unfilled life?

My best role is the hero’s best friend.  That’s the person who pushes the movie forward with information and insight that has eluded our movie’s hero.  (How can this mindless person ever be called a “hero?”)  This best friend is often a person who’s overweight, a geek or loner but the information shared inspires the audience who are rooting for the hero.  (“Best Friend” is never married but is full of marriage advice.  Go figure.)

“There’s no such thing as ending, you just leave the story.”

I heard a line in a movie that I love, “There is no such thing as ‘ending,’ you just leave the story.”  That’s life for us in real time.  Religious folks believe in something more that follows the closing credits.  For anyone, it is powerfully a life lived and after you’ve delivered all of your lines you just…”leave the story.”  The story continues without you. Hopefully you’ve contributed a small bit to its plot, its characters, its color and flavor.

“There’s no such thing as a small part…”, says the famous one.  It’s up to us to make our small part worthy of a feature film, hell – worthy of a life lived.

“Tis the season of giving” December tells us as though giving has a beginning and an end.  We even add a little cute word at the beginning giving us a festive feeling.
We need to give.  That’s the beginning and end of it.  We need to give.  We need to use the most powerful tool we possess which, in our case is money.
The “whom” of our benevolence is our choice –  homeless shelters, food pantries, whales, turtles (yes, there’s a turtle fund), refugees and how many organizations who want your money, name, keep your name and may even sell it to another organization.
Our mistake is that we emphasize the receiver instead of the giver as though we’re police, attorney and jury.  The point is that we need to give.  We need to give to prove that we have something of value to share.  If the recipient abuses our gift, it truly doesn’t matter because we shared a piece of our value with someone or something – other than ourselves.  “I want to know where my donation goes,” says the caller to the potential receiver.  Just hang up the phone because potential donor isn’t donating but attempting to justify a donation against just keeping it.  It’s safe but it’s never “giving.”

Giving needs to be free.  Giving begins in our hearts and is dollar by dollar licked away from our hand.  The monetary needs around us and our world abound beyond imagination including that lonely, shabby guy at the stop sign with the cardboard sign that says, “Will work.”  (Is “Will” really his name?” I wonder.)

I’m always amused by the beggar who asks me for “extra change.”  Who has extra change?  There’s nothing extra, it’s all here with me.  He needs a marketing director with a new “come on” line.

We need to give to connect us.  Our connections are fewer and fewer in spite of social media.  We sit alone keeping careful count of our pennies like a Dicken’s creation.

I like to give – any amount.  The police’s telephone call scares me because of a future call I may need to make to the police and they respond, “We see hear that you didn’t…” and the disabled veterans call is just weird to me since I stare at “Support Our Troops” bumper stickers daily at stop signs.  Where’s the government?  But don’t get me wrong, we need to give.

I’ve just fallen into the trap.  I’ve weighed and measured and found wanting others when I should be weighing, measuring and wanting within myself.  It’s not the recipient, it’s my need to give.

If I give a waitress a $3.00 tip then I can give her a $4.00 tip.

It’s not “Tis the ’season,” it’s “Tis me.”

Whether I hear it again on the radio or in my head, there are songs that mark my time. The past becomes the present when the melody is replayed as sure as a clock strikes midnight.

Anything by The Ray Conniff Singers resurrects my parents along with “Melody of Love” which I played for them on the family’s organ.

“Oh How Happy,” Shades of Blue, 1966, was the second 45 record I bought and I wore it out on my Sears Silvertone turntable. “Downtown,” Petula Clark, 1964, would be the first 45 to be worn away by manually placing the needle again and again at the beginning. My first 33 1/3 album (why a 1/3, I still don’t know) would be “The Beach Boys” around 1964.

“Lay Lady Lay,” Bob Dylan was the first record I played on the radio, 1969. The previous announcer just pulled it out and left the studio but it marked over 35 years in radio. Mercy’s “Love Can Make You Happy” was played often during those high school years for a friend and his girlfriend.  (He didn’t marry her but it was “Their” song.) The Carpenter’s “Close to You” was first played by me in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, 1970. I loved the song so much, I returned the needle to the beginning and played it again. Months later a friend said he and his girlfriend were at the outdoor theater and waiting for the movie to begin wondered why the radio announcer would play a song twice! James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” was also Manitowoc’s first hearing because of me, 1970.

Scott McKenzie’s “If You’re Going To San Francisco” was played when I asked if I could meet the radio announcer, 1966. The announcer I would replace years later was greeted one night by us seminarians requesting The Animal’s “We Gotta Get Outta This Place, 1969 and he complied. (We skipped campus and hitchhiked to get a decent burger and stopped at the radio station.)

Gershwin’s “They Can’t Take That Away From You” rang through my head as I lay prostrate in my ordination service, 1980. The Box Tops, “The Letter” is the remembered song while at St. Norbert’s College in DePere, Wisconsin. The four of us high schoolers decided to shoplift the “top 10” 45 records of the week. (Developing brains, what can I say! We could have chosen the “top 30”?) We got all ten, I regret it but that song was among them, 1967.

I hear Janis Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart,”1967 and remember a kind, petite woman who passed away but apparently had a dark side. Lou Rawls, “You’ll Never Find,” 1976 is another woman friend and we’d sing the life of it drowning out Lou. A San Fransisco summer internship turns out to be a big misunderstanding and I’m stuck there but with “Afternoon Delight,” Starlight Vocal Band, 1976 forever in my head.

My pretend radio show ran faithfully for two years on Saturday mornings and Henry Mancini’s “Bachelor In Paradise” was my theme song played at the beginning and the end of the show, 1965-66.

Two Milwaukee radio shows (talk show & rock show) run for over ten years and I think of stopping them both. Leaving for work, The Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rosie’s, “It’s Too Late To Turn Back Now” comes on the radio and I knew I was making the right decision, 1992.

If you’d read this far then I’m impressed because the songs are my markings and there are even more. And I hope to add more. I don’t know who Taylor Swift, Beyonce or Bruno Mars are but that’s for the new folks to clock their memories.  I already have mine.

Books available on Amazon by Fr. Joe Jagodensky, SDS include,
“Soulful Musings,”
“Living Faith’s Mysteries”
and “Spiritual Wonderings and Wanderings.”

George was right in his futuristic thinking that presently we love to loathe in.

I’m not sure about other states but in Wisconsin dump speech is used effortlessly and instantly agreed upon but the listeners.  “Beautiful day today?” says one and the other responds, “It’s supposed to rain next month.”  So much for the presently beautiful, sunny day.

“Packers are doing well this year,” is followed by “Yeah, but just wait.”  “I got a raise today” is replied with, “Well, there goes your taxes.”  In our exchanges our friends become our enemies with their dreaded retorts.  I have always considered this a safeguard for us in Wisconsin because when something bad does happen we happily (note the word!) say to ourselves, “I knew I was right.”  If “misery loves company,” just move to the Badger state.

“The Atlantic” magazine had a revealing story of Volkswagen’s tragic foibles.  Those who worked there slowly adopt and become a part of a “culture.”  Sociologist Diane Vaughan calls it “the normalization of deviance.”  By adopt I don’t mean anyone actually says “yes” but an assimilation gradually takes hold until the Packers are bound to doom (which any team does from time to time.)  In Volkswagen’s case it was the careless assessment of body parts that moves us from our homes to the the grocery store.  In our personal lives, it’s that simple water glass with half of it, well…you figure it out.

My only admonition to you and me is to beware of a “cultural” acceptance of anything.  I don’t do it with the Catholic Church and never would accept it in our U.S. society.

Mob mentality was George’s message to us.  Thinking alike and like-minded gets us through the day and comfortably to bed at night because we believe what others have said and “adopt” it for ourselves.

Yes, help me to think and reflect and discern and then to double check my discernment with others.  Please don’t do my thinking for me.  Yes, it may rain next month but it’s a sunny day today and I’m out to enjoy it whether you’re with me or not.

FOR SALE

Spacious, two bedroom “den” located between tree branches high atop a quiet neighborhood because it’s high atop the neighborhood.
Features include: bathroom (where ever you choose), dining room (as long as your cheeks are full), fireplace (just kidding, my wife and I thought about it and decided it was not a good idea), master bedroom (there’s a caste system among us as well), children’s bedroom in the back with a colorful, tasteful “nut” wallpaper.  If not interested in ownership, we also offer a time share if your squirrel’s nest becomes invested or suddenly drops twenty feet.  Or, choose us for our two-week summer and kept your Florida residency, for tax purposes.
Easy payment plans available through our Cayman accountant.  Fantastic aerial view of people coming and going and especially of their rooftops.  Gated entrance (who else can run up a tree trunk in seconds flat!?).  Must see.  Just ask the priest who marvels at our one-day creation.
Financing available, only serious calls will be returned.  Craigslist is for sissies, call me direct.

Mr. Never-A-Moment-Lost Squirrel, LLC.