Les Miserables... The Wretched Poor

"Cosette" by Emile Bayard in the original 1862 edition of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables 

Yesterday morning I hit the theater with the geriatric crowd for the first showing of the day ($6.25, mind you) and saw Tom Hooper's movie version of Les Miserables. My sister saw it Christmas Day and said she almost sobbed several times. I figured she was just tired. How could a movie where almost every word was sung actually grab hold of your emotions in any meaningful way when the singing constantly reminds you it's it's not real-- it's only a musical? I'm not a big fan of musicals because of that reason. Under normal circumstances, who breaks out in song in everyday life?

I confess, I did sweep my porch one day singing a rousing chorus of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz... "because, because, because, because, BECAAAAAAUSE!!! (with lots of vibrato) Because of the wonderful things he does." My sister-in-law caught me on that last line, and I haven't sung with my broom since.

Okay, I have to admit The Sound of Music is one of my all time favorite movies, and it's a musical, but they do a lot of talking in it, too, and a lot of the singing seemed to fit seamlessly in the story. But when Les Mis started with a bunch of wretched-looking prisoners singing as they struggled to pull a ship into some kind of coliseum-looking dock, I thought, oh no, this is going to be a long three hours.

But the three hours passed much quicker than I thought it would. And the gritty settings and grimy people really pulled me into the story, despite the continuous singing. I held my emotions in check, proud of the fact that I was in control, but when [spoiler alert from here on out] Javert walked down the line of bodies of the young rebels and stopped and pinned his medal on the young Gavroche, it took everything I had to keep from wailing out loud. And when Maurius sang his heart-wrenching song in the empty room where he and his revolutionary friends used to meet, it was heartbreaking to see the noble efforts of the young men snuffed out so easily, and their ultimate sacrifices changed nothing other than a short entry in France's history books. I'm sure we never would've known about the June Rebellion or given it a second thought if Victor Hugo hadn't used it as one of the story lines in his book.

But the piece de resistance that was almost my undoing was the last scene where Jean Valjean was dying, and I was so afraid his daughter Cosette and son-in-law Maurius wouldn't get there in time. Cosette's deceased mother Fantine is there to meet him at his death. And she sang him through it, and he agonizingly sings himself through it while his children are singing their praises and are trying to keep him from dying. The tears were streaming down my face, but I was afraid to make any sudden gestures to stop them lest they push some other viewers over the edge, and then we'd all start squalling at the top of our lungs.

Yes, the actors all sang throughout the movie, but they did it as naturally as breathing or talking, and it didn't take long into the movie before I forgot it was a musical. And I especially liked the fact that they weren't lip-synching. A mis-matched lip-synching effort will kill the magic and squash the performance faster than anything.

But the real reason I wanted to write about Les Miserables on this particular blog is that it left me with a powerful urge to want to do better, to be better, whether it's with my writing, or my interactions with others, or my attitude toward those less fortunate than me. I have a great respect towards those who have the courage to face the hard things in life with a will to make them better. The easiest thing for us to do is to turn away and not see the wrongs in our world. God doesn't expect us to try to fix everything ourselves, and it can be overwhelming when we think we're supposed to, but I believe He does expect us to do the right thing when someone crosses our path that needs help. I loved that about Jean Valjean's character. He could've been a thief for the rest of his life, and angry and bitter for the inordinate punishment for such a small crime of stealing bread. But when someone showed him overwhelming grace and mercy in spite of his stealing from that person, it changed him forever. And that's a beautiful picture of what Christ does for us, the wretched poor in spirit.

A fading skill

Last August when my friend and I visited London, we located a restaurant/pub two blocks away from our hotel, so we walked over there to try their "fish and chips." We were surprised to see the sidewalk in front of the restaurant full of people standing there drinking and visiting, and the throng wrapped around the the building. We almost turned around and left, but then we had no idea where another eating establishment was located in the area, so we decided to try to find the end of the line.

Turns out, it wasn't a line to the restaurant. People were just standing outside the pub to be able to smoke while they drank, or to drink with a friend who smoked, or to just stand around and visit outside. And we saw that again and again-- especially at the end of the work day. The drinking and smoking didn't impress me, but the fact that they were all enjoying conversing was refreshing to see. I don't remember seeing anyone with their face stuck in their cell phones texting in the eating establishments and pubs. Conversation was alive and well in London.

I fear we Americans are quickly losing that skill, especially with the younger generation. I rarely see teenagers and young adults without earbuds and their total attention glued to their cell phones. When family comes to my house, the television is usually on and half of us are either on our laptops, iPads or cellphones instead of having meaningful conversations.

My grandparents had a big back porch that was used regularly. I remember sitting out there shelling peas with my grandmother while we visited. My grandfather grew the best tomatoes in the sandy soil in Live Oak County, and each morning he would go out and pick several baskets full and display them on the porch for people to buy. They lived miles out of town so people had to make an effort to get there. But the sale usually involved conversing a while before they left. Every evening after supper my grandparents would sit on the porch, and often friends would drop by to visit. I remember how peaceful it was to sit there and watch the birds and listen to the sounds of pasture out behind the house and to just talk with each other. The porch was just as important as any other room in the house.

For years I told my mother that I wouldn't need the use of a shrink if I only had a porch to sit on and think things through or visit with family and friends. And now we live in a house with two big porches in the front and back of the house. Family visited this past weekend, and we actually sat on the front porch after supper Saturday night, leaving our electronic communicating devices inside, and we opened our mouths and talked.

It felt so good.

My niece Jenna took this picture; everybody else was on the other side of the camera at the time.

This is my favorite place to hang out with the grandkids.

Tis the Season for Adding More Clutter

Until my family moved to Cotulla when I was in the 7th grade, we moved about every three years. I was six weeks old when my dad finished his Navy service in California, and he moved his family back to Texas in 1954 to a cotton farm near Colorado City. Dad says he picked the worst three years of the century to farm, which was right in the middle of the severe fifties drought. Dad shifted gears to start a career in electronics and moved the family to Lubbock, followed by Corpus Christi, Fort Stockton, Salt Flat, and then Cotulla in 1967.

The memories of most of those years are neatly compartmentalized in my brain, divided into three year segments by communities, the houses, and the people in our lives at those times. I felt like I'd lived a whole lifetime before we moved to Cotulla. That was a watershed line for me. I seemed to compare and relate everything in the present and future with what I had experienced in the past in these other towns. It wasn't until I was in my late thirties that I realized I had lived longer in Cotulla than all the other communities combined. Up until that point, moving to Cotulla at age thirteen seemed to be the halfway mark in my life.

My memories of these past thirty-five years are much more difficult to sort and recall. Many of them are jumbled up together with few dividers marking time. Anniversaries and birth dates are usually memorable dividers, but they've all blurred with the passage of time. My children's adolescent years help somewhat, along with a few jobs here and there, but most of my memories are scattered about like the unorganized piles of clutter in my house

Another advantage of moving every few years is that it forces us to recognize what's important enough to keep and take with us, and to discard everything else. I'm not going to name names, but the Casey kids have inherited a patriarchal genetic clutter trait. I watch Hoarding: Buried Alive reality show every so often to scare me into to attempting to keep it under control. I'm going through a great, but convicting, study course-- Mercy Triumphs by Beth Moore-- that I keep reading and re-reading to try to get it to sink in.  On my closet door I taped the following quote:

"The sin of hoarding is more than just having. It's having without using."

To me, clutter feels like packing on the pounds a little at a time. For a while we don't notice it, then things start to feel uncomfortably tight, and eventually we fill up every conceivable space in our clothes and we're out of room. But instead of losing weight, we just buy larger size clothes.

Now go back and replace clothes with "houses" and losing weight with "de-cluttering." The clutter pushes our cars out of the garage, then it spills out into newly purchased storage sheds or fills up rented storage rooms. And on it goes, draining our resources, energy, and motivation to prioritize, simplify and let go. I'm not sure which is the greater restraint: us hanging onto our stuff, or our stuff having a chokehold on us.

One source of clutter in our homes is the gifts we buy each other, continually filling already full homes because we feel the need to express our love in tangible ways. Then we feel obligated to keep those gifts for sentimental reasons, even when they don't fit, match, or have any useful purpose. Or we battle clutter by giving them practical gifts like underwear or socks for a birthday or holiday. We've been given orders to not buy any more toys for my grandchildren for Christmas, so I can't wait to see their faces when they open up several presents of "practical" items. I'm thinking about turning it into a scavenger hunt to fun it up a little.

What about considering gifts that don't take up space and add more clutter to one's home? A friend told me she paid another friend's library fine for her birthday when the friend was going through a tough financial time. I thought that was a great idea, and it benefited the friend's entire family to unblock borrowing privileges at the library. Here are some other suggestions:

• Magazine subscriptions are wonderful gifts that can be donated to a library, nursing home, woman's shelter, etc. after reading them. 
• Gifts could be made in someone's name to a church, a charitable organization, scholarship fund, library, etc. 
• Monetary gifts could be given to a child's college fund or savings account. 
• Gift certificates for meals, movies, or concerts are great ideas. 
• One could give a gift of time and energy to those full-time working folks by mowing their lawn, baby-sitting, helping clean out their garage or paint a room, etc.

Now de-cluttering my mind is another story, and I'm not sure I will ever get my memories of my years in Cotulla organized, but I am working on prioritizing what I allow my mind to dwell on. One of my favorite verses says:

Whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy, think on these things.   Philippians 4:8

And that's a good place to start. I notice it does not mention bitterness, unforgiveness, anger, lust, revenge, self-pity, envy, covetousness, and regret. If any of these chokeholds are cluttering up our minds, they should be the first things we get rid of. Otherwise, like clutter, they'll eventually bury us.

Now, I'm off to work on my clutter piles-- inside and outside of my head. 

DREAM

"D" is for DREAM - a dazzling start to this acrostic;

        Which reminds me, DUH also begins with "D";

        "D" is at the beginning of my name 

        And other words like DISCIPLINE & DO & DID & DONE,

        Important terms for achieving one's dream.

"R" is for RAW when our dreams are new and untested by life;

        Some of the best dreams were REALIZED by people who didn't REALIZE

        their dreams were impossible to achieve;

        REACH & RAISE & REFLECT are also key 

        when it comes to REARING one's hopes and dreams;

        And REAL is good, too, especially as a noun when dreams become that very thing.

"E" is EASY; naw, I just swiped that off that off the top of my head;

        But when I think about it, dreams tend to be easy when they're inside our noggins,

        And hard when we try to get them to come outside.

        It would be nice if the process of fulfilling one's dreams is ELEMENTARY or even EUPHORIC,

        But more often than not, getting there is just plain EXASPERATING, 

        If not EMBARRASSING  at times.

        I still dream at this point in life, though, and that brings us to

"A"... I'm AFRAID to make a move on a dream without God's AFFIRMATION.

        I've finally learned that I ACTUALLY don't know what's good for me,

        Or if I can truly handle the ACTUALIZATION of a dream,

        So if I can't, I ASK God to shut the door.

"M" isn't the best letter to end with because what comes to MIND

        Is that I've MADE too MANY MISTAKES in the anxious and impatient pursuit of dreams,

        Worthless as well as worthy ones that I was determined to MANAGE MY way.

        Sometimes I ended up with MEDIOCRE results.

        But an even better "M" word that comes to mind is that God is MERCIFUL,

        And can MAKE something MAGNIFICENT even from the mistakes in my life.

                And He has.