Monday Morning Musing: A Spirited Advent

A friend recently recommended the new holiday film Spirited to me. Bruce and I watched it over the weekend and we were delighted by this new take on the familiar story of Scrooge and Jacob Marley and the potential in lives once thought to be unredeemable. It's a high energy, full of humor, musical with Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds, among others. Oh, and the glorious Octavia Spencer. And friends, this film made us think. It made us think hard about BIG things like the brevity of our days and the ripples of our actions and the ways we walk on this earth in this one beautiful life we've been given. And oh, it made us laugh, which felt good in these days of shared grief and sorrow.

This is one of those films, by the way, that you want to watch all the way to the very end, for the bonus scenes and the cut song, which is perhaps, my very favorite, called Ripple.

If we never test the waters, we'll never know, just how far the ripples go.

I love that line. If we never test the waters. I was taught to fear the waters, not to test them. And in these last years, I've been working hard to heal from that. I've been paying attention to the ripples that come my way and to the ripples that I create. Everything I do sends something out into the world that ripples into the lives of others. I want what I create to be ripples that will delight and not drown those who receive them.

So, this is my unusual Monday Morning Musing: a song from a movie that reminds me to enter Advent in ways that are spirited and spirit led and that create ripples of love in the world.

Here's a link to the song, Ripple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsN4vhb1qH8

Here's a link to the movie trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnAJntI3NNs