How will your life’s story end?
What if, in the admittedly unknown time you have left, you had a wish-come-true opportunity to live life, if not all over again, at least fully, ‘twice upon a time,’ not just once?
What would you do differently? Who might you love passionately? How would your new-found life change dramatically given your intent to pursue purposely what – and who – you now view as priority?
How nice to retreat into the children’s fantastical world of such surreal characters as dwarves, dragons, elves, fairies, giants, gnomes, goblins, griffins, mermaids, talking animals, and trolls.
There, after all, the ugly toad becomes a handsome prince; Sleeping Beauty is awakened with a kiss; the wicked witch has a major meltdown; all dark plots are resolved justly; evil and wicked antagonists and villains, et al, receive their due, and heroes live happily ever after.
Our lives, in contrast, are filled with rushing about typically; ringing is the phone incessantly; reminding, scolding, nagging – after all, piled ever higher in the corner on the floor – is the laundry; and the world – not just our world but the world beyond our front gate – is quickly, irrevocably – the very definition of entropy – slipping toward the abyss.
It was into such an 1889 world of New York that the tiny, frail Mother Xavier Cabrini entered and found “orphans trying their best to dodge disease, rats, criminals and heart-wrenching discrimination,” as described by Tomris Laffly, freelance film critic.
This diminutive missionary nun demanded, cajoled, and otherwise persuaded the powers-that-be to do their due diligence and get about helping the most vulnerable.
Her true story, “Cabrini,” is portrayed in theaters everywhere having begun this month of March.
She asked the questions then that contemporary viewers need to ask now: what kind of city, country or world do they want to live in? And who do you want alongside you to realize that world?
If our story, like Cabrini’s story, is to differ from most magical, whimsical, fanciful children’s sleepy-time stories we fondly remember while snuggled beneath the blankets, we must ask and answer those questions that she did, and join the adventure.
That is if we are to have a story, our story, a really-happened story.
A story that’s ‘Twice Upon a Time.’
