Weekly Message from T. J.

Follow It

I give myself very good advice,
But I very seldom follow it.
That explains the trouble that I’m always in.

— From “Very Good Advice” by Sammy Fain and Bob Hillard from the motion picture Alice in Wonderland.

I don’t know what my family used to think when their ninth-grade family member would sit at the piano and play this song from the lowest point in the hero’s journey in the motion picture Alice in Wonderland. If you recall the strange film, Alice sings this song so sadly that she actually cry-sings the ending of it. And her pitiable performance draws all of the strange creatures causing her troubles out of their hiding places to make some kind of peace with her.

The spooky nature of the surroundings in the film are almost as spooky as the strange experience that ends the performance: crying. For millennia, indeed for all of human history, the power of tears in story, in myth, in religion, in the lives of each one of us is clear and strong. In his many forays into theories of evolution, Charles Darwin himself found no particular use for tears. In fact you can read more than a few books that strain and search for any reason or purpose for human tears, and especially for crying. None will fully agree with any other, I assure you.

I was explaining to a friend this morning that a few days ago I spent about two hours making an Indian-food feast in my home. I started slow simmering the onions for the curry around 4:30 pm and I didn’t even get to the pan-fried breads until 6 pm.  And somewhere between flipping the breads and folding in the roasted potatoes, I felt a quiver in my chest. I was not thinking of anything sad. I was not even feeling particularly lonely. Quite the opposite: I was cooking a more elaborate dinner for myself than I have in quite a while. And at different times over the following days the same sensation of feeling a cry coming on would pop up.

I explained to my friend the sensation. And he said something like this: “Hey man, we’re all spending a lot of time still these days. And so we’re getting in touch with some deep emotions we aren’t used to noticing.”

The quiver never turned into crying. But it’s still there from time to time. Maybe a vestige from an early ancestor who responds to care or concern more physically than this human form does. Maybe the creature in each of us, the animal we so rarely face in our human lives, liked the curry wafting through a kitchen for hours and the crisp crackle of bread taking shape over heat. Or maybe from the shadows of a quieting mind, something new and strange was coming from its hiding place to make peace with me at last.  And so I wonder whether taking the advice to welcome something new into the light might well save me, might well change me from what I’ve always been. But mostly I hope whatever it is likes curry.

May it be so.
Rev. T. J.
minister@unitariansofhi.org