Looking Past the Chairs

In the episode of Desperate Housewives I watched today, they were showing how the Scavo family was attempting to open a Pizza place. Due to an ordering mix up, instead of dinning room chairs, 300 High Chairs arrived. The Scavos then spend the day hunting down donated chairs from various places. When Tom arrives for the grand opening he is furious about the random, unorganized chair situation. After the event is a huge success, Tom give his thank you speech which included the lines, "When I walked in and saw all the chairs I was upset because this project had been a failure. Now I see a room full of good friends, and people having fun...now I dont even see the chairs."

Often times in life we need to see past the chairs. We get so hung up on details. At Mass we always joke that if something doesn't go right, usually the ministers are the only ones who know. It was always the details that we would joke about amongst ourselves after the liturgy. Who stood at the wrong time, when the incense came out too early, etc etc. I was the worst of all often times. Every little roadblock that came up I would let slow me down more then I should have, because ultimately it wasn't that big of a deal.

I know I am the same way even now. We had a Halloween Costume Contest at work, and I got all stressed out about the small details of the event...Like where the contests were coming out from, and what song was playing etc etc, forgetting that I was dealing with a crowd of people who had been drinking all night, and odds are no detail would be appropriately met.

You see we do it all the time. When a tragedy strikes we can easily loose ourselves in the tragedy of the moment, and forget that we will get past it, and the next day is still going to come...with a whole new set of challenges. If we don't learn to "see past the chairs", we will drive ourselves insane. Life is far too short to handle it any other way.

Today is All Souls Day, a day when we remember all those in our lives who we have lost, especially in the last year. Those souls can certainly testify to the importance of "seeing past the chairs". If they could talk to us now, they would probably tell us that famous line we all have said, "If I knew then what I know now."

This year I watched a good friend of mine loose someone very close to him, and it made me start to think about how precious life is. We have to fully live every moment, without regret. We can't let the "chairs" slow us down...We certainly will trip on them, or stumble, but we pick ourselves up and learn from the mistake. We learn from those who have gone before us, and recognize that they held the role in our lives that they did for a reason. They sat in that particular chair for a reason.

And so today we remember our beloved dead. We acknowledge the lessons we learned from them and their lives. We resolve to "see past the chairs" in our own lives. Just consider, if we spent less time trying to control things that were beyond our control, how much easier, and happier life would be.

Rev. Bertrand N. Richman...Rest in Peace