Soulful Muse

You always hear glowing and bold qualities attributed to the person in the coffin or in the small walnut box.  Grandiose qualities that make you wonder why peace has not been achieved in the world or a stronger economy achieved or promising talks between Israel and Palestine.  “What a guy,” we say to ourselves as qualities are freely thrown about until the service is ended and the food is served.  I say to myself, “I thought he was accountant?”

As someone who’s officiated more funerals than weddings, I wish I heard more of what I experienced in the life of someone I cared about.

People I know have good qualities but the enduring memories for me is the “smells and bells” as Catholic say.  It’s the cinnamon on buttered buns and placed in the oven before we arrived so that we’d smell them as we entered the kitchen.  It’s the holy water crossed on our foreheads at night as though it counted as a blessing from a layperson.  (However being 10 years old, I accepted it as a an acceptable Catholic practice from a parent to a child.)

Cigar smoke, Old Spice from my dad and Estee Lauder on my mom (if I even get to smell them these days), a head laid on a sun dried, ironed pillow case that assured me that my D in arithmetic meant other options would be available to me twenty years down the road.  My mother had a habit of rubbing her index and middle finger together and my dad had a smirk that told us kids that he had no idea what we were talking about but that he’d still listen.

Friends’ memories include Lou Rawls singing, “You’ll Never Find,” and surprisingly, Janis Joplin with “A Little Piece of My Heart” from a demure friend.  Eating pizza by myself can conjure passed friends and the fun nights we had together.  At my dad’s funeral a priest friend did the cemetery service and used one of my dad’s cigar as incense.  It meant a lot to my family.  (The smoke lifted upward too!)

The bold qualities are what we hear in the public time of a funeral but I think what lasts is the smells and bells.  And they reappear to us when we least expect them which makes it the best in remembering them and then in remembering them again.

It was the neatly carved out segments that created your day for over forty years.  Each had a purpose and when one ended the next one began.

Then came the “gold watch” that you never received and now suddenly on Monday morning the whole day becomes a segment.  Filling it seems impossible following the comfort of the previous experience.  “Options” and “choices” were not part of your vocabulary during those years but now they haunt you from the moment you get out of bed, whatever time that may be.

Who you were was that job that consumed energy and interests – perhaps even sleepless nights with a morning decision or deadlines that were almost missed.  The familiar and new faces over the many years, the tasks and duties that provided for your family were gone when you left that last day with a box containing your family picture, paper clips and stapler (we should always take a little something when we leave, don’t you think?).

9:00 a.m. on the morning you’ve been waiting for, for all those long years has arrived.  It’s cloudy with a chance of rain and you believe that to be true about yourself as well.  Options and choices continue to ring in your ears.  A slow breakfast is your first thought but wondering if you’ll create a new pattern of daily breakfasts like that.   Volunteering for that favorite charity comes to mind but then slowly seems to dwindle as the hours seem longer now than they did before.  “The ‘Price is Right’ is on now but watching crazy people in your bathrobe just doesn’t seem right.  “There’s golf,” but at your age if you didn’t play it before then you will not play it now.

At parties or gatherings how long does it take before the most important question is asked of you or you ask it to someone, “So, what do you do?”  Identity is then connected by the occupation that occupied your segments for all those years.  Saying “retired” seems to move the person to the next person.  “Oh, you’re lucky,” says the new person wondering if she’ll watch “The Price is Right” only a few years from now.

A friend gave me one of the best lines for life, “you are in old age as you’ve always been, only more so.”  The “were” that distracts you now is only answered by the same question a teenager asks, “who are you?”  “Were” looks back at a time that no longer exists and is over.  “Who” is always the question that is never quite completely answered but clues are given throughout our long lives.

You slowly forget the “gold watch” that you never received and look for the “gold” that is always before you.  It is the “who” that you’ve always been and will continue to be.  The interesting part is the “more so.”  How can you fill these new segments with “more so” of yourself?

Following music today gets sketchy for someone like me who still misses “Spanky and Our Gang” but I’ll try.

Robin and Pharrell wrote a song that appears to be mimicking one written by Marvin Gaye, enough for the court to let these two lads pay millions of dollars that you and I cannot imagine having but less parting with it.  (They both have enough left so sympathy is not necessary.)

I liked the comparison of homage against plagiarism that Pharrell gave.  He’s defending himself against the latter in favor the former.  For a Christian, both words have power and influence in our lives.  We pay homage to Christ by plagiarism in any shape and form in order for us to be renewed, revived and reignited for our tasks ahead.  Pharrell losing the former meant guilty to the latter, the latter being somewhat emptying his pocketbook.

For all we know Jesus’ mother Mary may still be alive and well and living in Ephesus and listening to my sermons where I homage her son daily with plagiarism.  Not that Mary would get much from me but the trial would be interesting when my attorney argues that Father talks a good talk but check out his daily life and you’ll see little if any plagiarism and only a token of homage.  (That’s my cue to humbly put my head down to convince the jury.)

Musically, I’d side with Pharrell by the homage he pays to those who paved the way for him to make millions upon millions.  In the 1960’s every song had four chords, repeated in variation but always within that limited number.  All the music sold well for all of them.

My homage to the Son of God is the four chords of charity, forgiveness (self and others), mercy and wisdom.  I’ll repeat them again and again in my sermons in various ways but always with those same four chords.  The plagiarism charge I’ll leave to the Blessed Mother and her attorneys, “Bible, Bible and Sons.”  As for my daily behavior, I have the same challenge we all have to pay both homage and plagiarism to the one who sustains and guides our lives.  There’s are no “blurred lines” with that last sentence.

From Italian to Latin, diva literally means “goddess.”  “Well, there is no goddess in our God-fearing U.S.,” says the manly man with a Marilyn Monroe poster in his office not knowing why it’s still hanging there.

If there’s a hole in our lives it will be filled.  If there’s an opening for something to complete us, it will be filled.  The unconscious has a nasty but wonderful way of doing that to us.  We are often not aware of it but those ruminations are bubbling underneath that small thing we call ego.  The Blessed Mother does it for the Catholic Church and Beyonce does it now for two generations behind me.  Barbra (no last name needed) does it for my generation as Loretta Young did it for two generations ahead of me.  Oh wait.  If it wasn’t Loretta then it was Grace Kelly or even Bette Davis or Joan Crawford depending how your ruminations ruminated.

Male world.  Man’s world.  Masculine/feminine – the balance is there deep within our lives but the reality favors the first over the second.

I love that the unconscious will always win out.  Why?  Because it’s the most holistic part of us that represents all of us (archetype) and slowly bubbles over and forth until a balance is reached or at least an acknowledgment is made of its existence.  Diana Ross?  Done deal.  She is the real deal.

Mother-types?  It’s a stretch but not one to stew over.  It’s too easy to dismiss the “mother” thing.  Some of them we may wish to be mothers but I wouldn’t suggest Joan Crawford. (See the movie!)  Actually, I wouldn’t suggest any of them because it is not “mom” we unconsciously yearn for but it’s the balance of masculine and feminine.  (Notice it’s not male/female because that’s physical but it’s the wholeness of our lives that the ruminations yearn for.)

Oh, I forgot to mention Madonna (interesting name?) who resurfaces again and again because I think she knows what I’m saying.  Her family’s Italian name just doesn’t have the same power or ring as her balancing act of acting out the opposite of the purer holder of that name.

I hope this doesn’t surprise you because this balance is way off in our present culture.  Those divas will continue to command applause and adulation unless their power is recognized in our conscious minds.  Marilyn’s been dead for how long now?

In our team meetings about who’d play the role, we’d never choose Joseph for the second most important role in salvation history.  Fellow employees would laugh at my suggestion of offering him the part.  They’d tell me to take a break and come back when I had a solid choice for this revered role.  It needs to be correct the first time because there is no second take on rolling off the role of Jesus’ earthly father.  “House of David” is the only thing our casting crew can agree upon.  The rest seems up for grabs.

But I did not need a break after all because finally the group gives in to choosing the humble guy, the quiet guy, the “character-actor” we’ve seen hundreds of times on TV and in movies but whose name we just can’t remember.  I guess we couldn’t upstage the second lead, Mary, with some famed person.  It wouldn’t be right.  The part had to go to the unassuming guy whose character can be whatever you want him to be, because of the little we know about him.

Mary has made up parents to complete her but we couldn’t even invent two folks to birth Joseph.  Ozzie & Harriet?  Rob and Laura?  Ralph & Alice?  Bob and Emily?  Ward and June?  Nope, no association to even solidify his Jewish roots was the necessary plant for the Son of God.

Historians tell us that there was no census, there was no need for one.  There was no flight to Egypt (can you even imagine traveling there on a donkey with no flyer miles!?)  Jesus probably was not lost in the temple either while his parents went shopping and somehow forgot they had a son.  (I’d understand if they had four kids but to misplace one?)

For me it’s the dreams that clinched the part for Joseph, with no last name either.  Like the Old Testament Joseph, the dreams are what makes him memorable and important to this age old story.  Dreams of caution, trust and guidance were heeded by New Testament Joe that protected and sheltered this small family as any father would provide.

He’s now abused and honored centuries later.  The abuse is burying him in some direction to get a quick sale on your home and the honor is he’s the one who had what the Church calls “a happy death,” if that’s even possible.  I guess with your Son and Mary at your bedside, the transition could be a little less painful.  March 19 is Joseph the Husband and May 1 is Joseph the Worker.  I’ve always honored March 19.  Work is too difficult but dreaming is always fruitful and fun.

Very few things have any value in our society – from neck ties to fetuses.  What is value?  We all knew it when the product was presented to us.  A refrigerator was envied in the department store downtown and our savings were carefully planned.  Soon it arrived, and in those days with a bow around it.  All things have value.  It is the value to create, distribute and sell it.  The markup is proportional to the product.  That’s where our problem creeps in.

If you made three handbags you may a difficult time selling them at a local fair or online but if the bag has a prominent name on it then your end cost (value) can be anything that the market can handle.  (That’s the extent of my business knowledge.)

I now wear logo neck ties that cost me $3.00 compared to the same $20.00 version in that department story downtown so I really didn’t need to save for the purchase.  I have a popular name wrist watch from the same Chinese knock-off that knocked off the $2,000.00 price to, yes, $4.00.  Am I cheating?  No Americans would say “no”and want to know the website.  The analogy between neck ties and human life may offend you but it shouldn’t.

I’ve always believed it is the slow redefining of one thing that leads to another.  Sometimes it is good as in slavery, working hours and numerous other things we now take for granted.  We live in a society that’s learned to throw away because the value of everything appears to be up for grabs.  We’ve lost the true value of something and attached another value to it.  I’ve learned from that Chinese website that the value of my neck ties now has a different or truer lesser value.

Abortion has taught us that value is a relative word when faced with a life-changing and an everything-changing-event.  Everyone would agree that human life has no value, for it is priceless yet we do not act in the same way.

I began with my twisted twist from neck ties to fetuses.  You are not allowed to be political in the Catholic Church circles so the argument remains in simplistic voting habits but in real life becomes complicated.  Half of the U.S. pregnancies are unintended.  (Read that sentence again!)  Half.  Simply to be against abortion is to miss that really awful word we’ve taught ourselves to hate unless it applies only to us and our benefits: government.

State and federal governments repeatedly cut the means for single moms or those in doubt about a pregnancy to raise a healthy child.  The same political party against abortion is also the same party against giving a fair chance to raise an “unintended” child, which is by the way, half.

We can spend a long time talking about abstinence and moral behavior but we’d be talking about a different country.  The political party that glibly is against abortion is also the party that conveniently cuts funds that discourages a birth to a freightened mom, discourages nourishment for those important early years and discourages bringing a new healthy member into our society while all the while gathering votes toward a no abortion resolution.

We all know the value of human life – it is priceless. Human life has no value because it was not ours to create but it is ours to recreate, nurture and ensure, as best we can.

The cost of human life as “priceless” is our theology, the “value” of human life does have a cost both emotionally and financially.  Can we not half the half of those unintended pregnancies so they may one day savor the bright blue sky we all enjoy?