So about that "muchness" I mentioned. Yes, I finally did see the new Alice in Wonderland. Yes, the wonders of modern technology... I watched it on the screen on the back of the seat in front of me on the way to Paris. So.... what did i think?... well, it all followed so well with where I have been with Alice these days. The particular part of the movie that struck me was the concern of all the characters that the grown girl who had fallen down the rabbit hole was not indeed the "real' Alice. This "Alice" has lost her "muchness". The real Alice had much "Muchness" so this can't be the "real" Alice. So true! What does happen to us that causes the "real" us to lose our "muchness"? Do we grow tired and weary and sad with the weight of the world? OR does our realism over shadow our belief that we can and will do what we set out to do? I am not sure which it is but somewhere along the way in this life I too, like Alice, lost my "muchness." When I was younger, I always seem to know where I was going. I had a sense of certainty and maybe even an arrogance about me that I knew what and how I was suppose to live. Maybe it was my youthful rebellion or my confidence in my own mortality. Through the years though, through moments of grief, through pain and uncertainty in life, through circumstances I did not expect, through experiences that have shown me I am pretty clueless, somewhere in all of that I lost my "muchness." I am not saying that a little humility and greater dependance on God wasn't necessary for me. But in someways I 'threw the baby out with the bath water' so to speak. Somewhere in there I lost my passion. I lost me.
So the great news is somewhere along my travels, I seem to have found it again. A moment standing on the grass of a Tuscan farm watching my children play with strangers, eating a meal cooked and prepared by families from all over this world, somewhere in that sweet moment of community and gathering together. I remembered and discovered anew what makes me tick. A passion and need for music and art in my life daily...A true love of community... friends gathered...wine...good food... new friendship...multicultural interactions that transcend language and are brought together by just a smile and a shared twinkle in the eye...the beauty of both the landscape created naturally by God and the hardscape molded by man through history and time blended and transcendent in time and place.... simple unity of the present and the past...not in competition with each other but acceptant and embracing of one another.
These are the places and moments that hallmarked this trip for me. They are the moments in time that have from the beginning of time brought simple contentment to the human heart. They brought contentment to mine and in a sense a newness of purpose and "muchness" to recreate those simple moments both for my family and my close friends, as well as, for any strangers that may cross my path in years to come.
