Soulful Muse

The overpaid actor waits outside the studio lot for next week’s TV script.  The successful show has earned him a modem of success and the next script could lead him to even bigger projects.  “I wonder what my character will do this week?” the actor thinks to himself as he awaits a 12 hour day of rehearsals and taping.  He thinks that his character should do this or that, it’s only natural considering the past episodes yet he’s not the writer, others are given that job.  “My character said that he loved her so why not pop out the ring?” he thinks to himself.  “God,” he quickly thinks to himself, “what if this week the writers decide to kill me off and replace me with a cheaper actor.”  (“Do union dues cover this?” he mumbles to himself.)

If we say that God is in charge then that let’s us off of life’s hook.  If we say we’re a humanist than we’re pretty much damned to repeat today what happened yesterday.

“Script.”  I love that word.  Someone else has written words that we need to speak, and we need to mean it.  Are the words the rote that we’ve rehearsed and performed for decades or are they new insights that we’ve garnered that we’re able to incorporate into our character; that person who performs each day in front of others.

Acting is a learned skill.  Living life is a blessed, learned skill.  Invented and reinvented, everyday.

No matter your age, those words speak volumes.  They speak of a tomorrow that is promised to each age.  Give an Alzheimer’s test to a 12 year old and she’d be committed for sure.  She has no idea about time because for her it is timeless.  The hopes and dreams that lull her to sleep each night are full of “forevers and evers.”

Turn the numbers around and he finds himself close to college graduation and the unknown tomorrows scare yet lure him toward them.  The commencement address only adds to the excitement of the “oyster” or the “budding flower” or the “anticipation” theme of the speaker.

Add twenty more to the graduate’s age and “forever” redefines itself but never loses its punch.  Now it’s the growing bigger home and fancier car that establishes his today is here because there’s a tomorrow.  (“Larger mortgages, car payments, it’s all okay.”)
Add another twenty and she may be in her second marriage but “forever” still lives in the wings.  “This is man I love,” she thinks to herself while fondly remembering the “forever” statement to the first one.  Retirement plans are now in the works with “forever” written all over them.  “61?  That’s nothing.”

Let’s add twenty more and see where he is now.  Who would have thought?  He’s still in “forever” mode.  His wife’s passing along with many friends he now clings to, you guessed it, “forever.”  There’s a place for him that’s been prepared (some religions you need to plan for, others it’s just one of the perks) just for him since the beginning of his life.  How long does “forever” stuff last?  I think you already know the answer.

He smiles to himself and she smiles to herself.  The adage is “to live for the day” but we all know we live for”evers and evers.”     

It’s a simple question. What is your answer?

I hate when someone comes up to me and asks, ‘What are you doing today?”  I have to answer, “Nothing.”
“Oh good,” she says.  “Would you clean the toilets?”

“Damn, I think to myself.  Tricked again.”  If only she asked me the second question first, “Would you clean the toilets today?”  Then my answer can quickly become, “Oh, that’s too bad, I’m completely busy today.  Sorry.”

What Jesus ask?.  He asks the first question and none other.  No details or duties.  Jesus says to each of us, “What are you doing today?”

Details and duties, Jesus doesn’t seem concerned about them.  As if he’d say, “They’ll work themselves out.”

Who would say, “Yes” if the questions were life’s second ones?

“Hey how would you like to be a widow and raise your three children alone?”  “Wow, Jesus, really!  I’d love to do that.”  Hardly.

“Hey…
— how would you like to be cancer free for one year only to have it return?
— how would you like to know that your mind is fading away with each passing week and there is nothing anyone can do about it?
— how about having an inoperable tumor and the doctor says, “Let’s just wait and see?”
—how about a stupid car accident leaves your son a paraplegic?

Or simpler but just as complex ones…
“Hey…
— how about carrying a big chip on your shoulder that weighs you down daily?
— how being stuck in a job that you hate but having children to feed and clothe?
— how about finding something wrong with everything because you’re right about everything?
— how about being bored at 80 years old as much as a 12 year old is on a rainy Saturday afternoon?

If Jesus asked us the second question first, how many of us would say, “Hey, great, bring it on!”  Instead Jesus only asks us the first question first, “What are you doing today?”

You know, this “yes” and “no” stuff of Jesus doesn’t make any sense.  It doesn’t matter in life whether we say “yes” or “no” to Jesus because stuff will happen to us either way.  You’ll still have that cancer or you’ll still have that shoulder’s chip.

But saying “yes” to Jesus begins a partnership.  A true value, as the Alexian Brothers tell us, partnership is a mutual and beneficial exchange and experience between two people.  

We tend to think of God as the “Big Guy Up There” and we’re His tiny puppets puppetting through life.  Yet as God’s creation, as God’s creatures we are hardly puppets attached to a heavenly string.  St. Paul calls us “ambassadors” for surely we are that in making God known and present in our world.  That’s our part of the partnership.

God fulfills His part of the partnership by providing us with every possible gift (religious word) or tool (earthly word) that we need to make it through this life:
mercy…kindness…forgiveness…patience…an extra cheek when the first one was smacked… left eye because we  plucked the right one…
and most importantly the grace (religious word) for the strength and stamina (earthly words) to answer Jesus’ first and only question to us, “What are you doing today?”