Happy two days until national Loosen-Your-Belt-And-Be-Proud-Of-It Day! [Which is followed, naturally, by national Oh-Shit-Did-I-Really-Eat-That-Much-Oh-Well-At-Least-I-Won’t-Have-To-Cook-For-A-Week Day.]
I thought I’d give you a preview of what my Turkey Day dinner will look like. First course: stuffing, vegetable tray, and cranberry sauce.
I thought about trying to spend as much time introducing today’s post as the Good Reverend did introducing chapel this morning, but I quickly realized that such feat requires talent beyond my gifting. So, good job Jason: I wish I had it in me to be as awkwardly verbose as you.
Hopefully the tech crew took this morning’s opportunity to revel in the limelight of chapel fame for a few fleeting moments. Heaven knows they won’t get another shout-out anytime soon.
Second course: fruity Jello, green bean casserole, and corn on the cob.
Today’s band put on their snowshoes, scaled the mountain of embarrassment that has been chapel music this semester, and proudly planted their flag at the top: a solitary declaration of a break from the blissful mediocrity we have become accustomed to. [I know I could have just said, “Props to the band.” But that’s soooooo boring.]
Oh, and the chorus to the band’s second song reads thus:
“Here I am, Lord, tonight,
With my arms open wide.
Won’t you come inside?”
I’ll give you one guess as to what my comment about this chorus is going to be.
Ready?
Got it?
If you guessed, “That’s what she said,” then you are correct! Huzzah!
Third course: turducken, mashed potatoes with white gravy, and dinner rolls. Scrumptious.
I never know how to prepare myself when the Good Reverend speaks. Which I suppose is a good thing, because he mixes things up enough to keep life interesting. This morning I half expected him to launch us into the break on a high note with an energetic presentation involving video clips, special effects, trapeze artists, and maybe even a guest appearance by Kevin Bacon. [Hey, you have to be ready for anything in chapel.]
Instead we were treated, and I mean that seriously, to a somber bit of existential storytelling. The first thing to note here is that the Good Reverend is, surprise surprise, a very good storyteller. [If he ever finds a woman with enough sense in her head to marry him, his kids will be in for a treat at bedtime.]
The stories we don’t tell. . . .
. . . .are heartbreaking.
. . . .are threatening.
. . . are revealing.
. . . .are normal.
. . . .are real.
. . . .are ours.
One of my favorite things Jason pointed out this morning is that the stories that we are often a part of are not always the ones we would have chosen. Life is a bitch, you know? And sometimes the best we can do when life gives us lemons, at the risk of sounding like your eighty-six-year-old grandmother who will probably fall asleep at the dinner table on Thursday, is to make lemonade. Sometimes the changes that need to be made have to start with us.
It’s also interesting to note that, most of the time, the stories that don’t get told are the typical ones. Think about the television shows you watch. I mean, no one in real life has a car as badass as Kit or can travel through time. We want life to be glamorous. We want life to be sugar-coated and easy on the eyes. We want to hear the good stories, the encouraging stories, the stories about interesting and improbable coincidences that sound almost too good to be true. We want to think that those stories can happen to us. We want the big wedding. We want to be the one to catch the hail-mary and win the game. We want someone to show us what we need to do to get there. We want the lines to be drawn in electric, indelible ink so that if we fuck up we immediately know to retrace and rethink our steps. . . .
But that’s not life, is it? I think one of the greatest tragedies of our time is that most of us sit around staring at a screen/pulpit/stage/person waiting for an overly-romanticized and completely unbelievable life to drop into our laps, never realizing that such a life is so highly improbable that the only thing we gain by waiting is weight.
“Life doesn’t happen to you, you happen to life.”
“Love is a verb.”
“And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.”
Life is proactive, people. Your life will be what you make of it: no more, no less.
And as we’re all now properly motivated to go out and conquer the world, I think a good question to start with is one that was posed by the Good Reverend himself.
“How well do you ever really know anybody?”
That oughta get some people moving.
And for dessert: homemade fudge, pumpkin pie, and chocolate covered pretzels. Yum.
“Keep near me and you will be safe.”
Daedalus
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4 comments:
Don't get me wrong, Daedalus, I want to argue with you, but you haven't said anything this time around with which I disagree. Congrats.
I agree with The Wanderer. I expected to be confronted with the problems and oddities of Jason and/or his storytelling, and instead your post helped me to appreciate his talk even more. Thank you.
And I agree about the music. It was wonderful.
From the last post:
"Are we so dense that we need pictures of flames to animate the concept of Hell? [Which is not Biblical, by the way. We have Dante to thank for the flames and tridents.]"
"If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. . . . where their worm never dies and the fire is never quenched." Mark 9:43, 48.
I'm just saying . . .
That's not right. I always heard "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, then throw it in the face of the person who gave you the lemons until they give you the oranges you originally asked for.
I have to say, D., I'd never really thought of you as a girl until this post.
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