I was driving home from the "city" the other day, after dropping off cousin Connor and son Ronan to the airport, Connor returning home and Ronan going for a two week visit and camping trip, and as I drove along the forest-lined roads I was pondering how truly beautiful life is, the life that we are given. I felt overwhelmed. It literally made my chest and throat tight with emotion... and I realize how truly inadequate words are. The sky was filled with dark gray-white storm clouds, the sunset was reddening the sky in my rear-view mirror and tall, dark green jack pines, interspersed with gleaming silver birch trees, stood sentinel along the way. The occasional car passed us by filled with unknown souls on their own journey through life. Meg, Dara and their friend Marie were filling my ears and heart with songs from their MP3 player. After dropping off the boys we had gone to dinner and the movies together... a girl's evening...we saw the film "Mamma mia."
I have problems with it. There are some parts I liked.... the singing, Meryl Streep amazed me, Pierce Brosnan amused me, it was definitely funny in parts. But it made me uneasy, it is bawdy in its' visual humour, it is irritating in its homosexual references and it is very sad in its storyline.
Donna, the main character, has been promiscuous and had a child out of wedlock...the girl has grown up fatherless ("it sucks", she cries to her mother) and on the eve of her own wedding is trying to find out who her father really is...to no avail.... she doesn't find out, she doesn't get married, she decides to go off with the boyfriend and explore the world, (and risk, I presume an illegitimate pregnancy and so repeating her sad circumstances for the life of her child). Donna gets married to her first beau, that if she had waited for instead of going off and sleeping with some one else, she would have seen had come back for her and so at the end, supposedly, everything is fine and dandy.
Oh! some will say...it's just light entertainment...you are making too big a deal of it... the music is great and that makes up for it all. The music was great and there are a few times that it moved me to tears. Donna sings to her daughter of "growing up... waving good-bye", she sings to Sam(?) that the "winner takes it all" indicating that he won.... I found the lyrics very poignant. Overall, despite the music and the fun, the movie made me sad... sad for all the children who have not had a parent, for men and women who had given themselves totally to another outside the beautiful security of marriage.... for anyone one who does not feel, or sense or know that the "dream" that lies within all of us, that ache that longs to be filled can only be filled with God.
It seems to lie constantly before me that thought, that we need to be filled more and more with God, that everything we do and say, everything we do not do and say needs to be considered with Him in mind.
As I drove along, I felt so thankful for my husband and the gift of marriage that is our vocation in life. This man is truly a saint, everything he does and says reflects God, he always treats others as Jesus would treat them. He is beautiful. He is beautiful and I love him. He constantly calls me on to be a better person, woman, wife and mother. John-Paul II wrote of the "Theology of the Body" and on reading that we recognized what we were living.... and know what a grace it is and that all is God's mercy.
While seeing all that, I know how far short I fall... and how much I need to grow. I feel I can't waste any time, even though I do. Life is so short and fragile, we never know how much time is allotted to anyone. It is how I speak to my children, a kind word, a loving look, a happy smile, thoughtful discipline in the light of peer pressure from their friends...helping them stay the course, that will allow me to progress in holiness. Ha, Fr. Sean, will tell you how I dreamt of being a missionary and saving the world, with my own jeep of course! when I was young.... I have had to fight the need for recognition and do my missionary work in my own little domestic church. I wouldn't change it for anything else. I see how He teaches me, in the laundry, in the cooking and cleaning how much I can just praise Him. He is so good to me, to us. Our Lady is such a peaceful, obedient role model for me, for all I guess, and on this her feast day, I thank God for her example.
