Good morning or good afternoon…

Good morning or good afternoon, welcome to class.

Welcome.

I’m writing today because I want you to know where your strength lies. I’m writing today because I worry about you. I worry that you will miss the truth. I worry that you will let the architecture of your heart remain rigid and, (while looking what is so right in the eye) allow agreements you have signed with a blood oath but never knew you had made, bind you to all that is so but never was and never really will be. We carry, (in a long bag we drag behind us) agreements about who we are, where we are, and what we are destined to do become. Our parents and ancestors slip through the doorway of sleep in the dead of night and plant new ones, or water the old to keep them fresh and alive. Agreements that bind you and blind you to the simple truth, that you are welcome.

Thanks.

You’re welcome.

God, the details can weigh you down can’t they? Life has never moved this fast. Can’t even keep the fucking checkbook balanced. Every time I write one I slash a note in the ledger about who I wrote if to and for what amount, but when am I going to get the time to pull the numbers down and find a total? My agent sucks. I don’t even have one. If I did they would suck. Spiderman fucking III. Toby Maguire doesn’t even look like that, plus you don’t write the number three like that – it’s backwards. Brilliant. Clean your apartment, pick up the kids and wonder what exactly is coming out of his nose? Change in the car and walk into a room full of people who look exactly like I do. Student films. There’s the answer. But the director has pimples, and the camera is impossibly small. I didn’t get into this to have a camera that small pointed at me! I won’t fit in that! I want one of the real camera’s, the one that looks like it’s some ancient God being tended to by a small band of priests who hang all over it with spray cans of compressed air and mysterious metal boxes with long black things I don’t know the name of but will nod agreeing when they tell me the number of the one they have attached to the rolling metal God. That’s a camera for me! But right now, I have to go to work. “Would you like another roll?” (“Cuz I sure as hell would like one, not even another one, just my first one”) “What?” I’m sorry, sourdough or raisin walnut?” Super.

Thanks.

You’re welcome.

I’m writing to you because I was talking to a very serious young actor I have known for years yesterday who wondered what I thought, (and I assume what everyone else thought as well) about him. I stumbled for an answer for a bit, and the truth came out.

“Not trying to be a buzz kill here on the importance of it all my serious young friend, but I think I have lived just long enough to discover that the truth, whether it works for you or not … is that life … is a joke. No shit, a joke. You hear the wind in the trees? That’s God laughing. So is every other sound. Life is a joke. It’s a meaningful joke, but a joke none the less”

Thanks.

You’re welcome.

You are more welcome to this joke than you could ever have imagined. This is a joke that is awake at all hours of the day and night with open arms, just waiting for you to fall into them. Waiting for you to stop trying to change everyone else and rest in its arms. Waiting for you to stop resenting anything and I mean any thing, and curl up in its lap.

I love a good joke. And I have the best one ever: Your life.

Thanks.

You’re welcome.

Jokes are important. Nobody likes a shlem without a sense of humor. Why do you think the Dahli Lama is smiling all the time? Cuz he gets to wear a skirt? Cuz he’s endlessly happy? I doubt it. It’s because God is laughing and he can hear it; and he’s waiting for you to laugh along with him. Laugh through your tears of frustration, guilt, shame, longing, or loss. Laugh when you don’t know where your next paycheck is coming from or even if there will ever be one. Love with unerring ferocity the ones who are near you, and laugh for all the meaning that brings to your day. Laugh on your deathbed, because the end is only the beginning.

When you don’t feel welcome it’s because you rang the wrong bell. The house of frustration and pain will open the door and let you in, but it will never welcome you. You don’t belong there. Do you welcome those ants that have decided in the heat of the summer to march their armies up your sink and into your trash can? No. They don’t belong there.

Listen; you are welcome. God is playing hide and go seek with himself disguised as you and everything else. Don’t be the kid who stands there and balls because he couldn’t find anybody when he never even started to look. He won’t be invited back to the game. And if you are him, then cross the playground and ask nicely if you can play just one more time. Promise you won’t give up too soon and bring the game to a halt with your tears and recriminations. Promise you’ll search under every bench and bed. Promise that when the other kids find the hider first you won’t kick someone’s shin but instead you’ll ready yourself for the next round, keep an open heart, count to ten, and go looking for the gift this life came into being to give you.

Make it matter, even though it’s funny. Engage those around you in the game you have discovered. Ask how you can help to give away what you thought was what you wanted for yourself. And most important of all, the whole point of this message today; why not set God as your highest example of conduct, and just like life does for you every hour of the day and every day of your life … open your arms to the one next to you and let them know …

“You’re welcome.”

Thanks.

Cameron Thor

This entry was posted on June 16, 2008 at 11:47 am and is filed under Essay. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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