I start each week not always knowing where these pandemerings will take me. Since Monday was a movie, let me share something from another movie that touched me. Could this perhaps be movie week at deaconGary.net?
That movie is “The Bucket List” , and there is a scene in it where Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson, both playing characters who were dying with cancer, are sitting atop a pyramid in Egypt.
Freeman turns to Nicholson and says – “You know, the ancient Egyptians had a beautiful belief about death. When their souls got to the entrance to heaven, the guards asked two questions. Their answers determined whether they were able to enter or not.
The first question is ‘Have you found joy in your life?’ The second question was ‘Has your life brought joy to others?’”
In a way, this captures another aspect of redemption addressed in Groundhog Day.
To find joy in our lives requires a fair bit of introspection … not the least of which is discovering what it is that makes us joyful.
Most of the goals we strive for, things like financial success, travel, popularity or material possessions count for far less than we expect when it comes to finding joy. And going through this time of pandemic has certainly impacted those goals!
If anything, these times have allowed us the time and perspective to discover what is truly most important in our lives, to find the things we are truly and deeply grateful for.
It has become a time when we have been able to focus on our “inner life”, and have likely found that we can attain a sense of wellbeing irrespective of what is happening in our “outer life”. In a way, we are exploring and discovering the answer the first of Freeman’s questions.
The answer to the second question touches on how we can positively impact the lives of others …. how we can show our concern and love for others through tangible actions.
Cardinal Thomas Collins talks about this as “breathing in and breathing out”. We draw in, go within, to bring a deeper sense of the presence of God deep within us. And we breath out words and actions that bring about change in others, change in the world. Both are needed. Both are necessary for a full and healthy life, spiritual or otherwise.
Well, today you might not be sitting on the top of a pyramid in Egypt. But perhaps you might find time to consider those two questions, and how you would answer them.