Sometimes your dreams get broken in pieces
But that doesn’t alter a thing.
Take it from me, there’s still gonna be
A summer, a winter, a fall and a spring.
— Fred Ebb, “And the World Goes ‘Round” (from New York, New York)
From time to time, there is a close relationship between composers and performers. One such was the relationship between Liza Minnelli and songwriters John Kander and Fred Ebb, starting with their show Flora the Red Menace in 1963 and continuing until Ebb’s passing in 2004.
Recently, we heard this great product of that collaboration on one of our favorite programs, Footlight Parade: Sounds of the American Musical. It’s a wonderful radio show about musical theatre.
The lyrics quoted above may seem odd from a Science of Mind/New Thought perspective. But they point out what one of our Center’s founding ministers, Rev. Noel McInnis, used to call “local pain, cosmic joy.” Although we may be going through painful experiences, although our dreams may be broken in pieces, the experience of the Universe is joy. The shattered pieces may be a dramatic kick in the shins to get moving – pick up those pieces, find what is yours to do, what makes you sing. The shattered dream leads us to the newer, bigger, deeper dream, which it is the joy of our Universe for you to pursue and achieve.
Sometimes we try to make the old shattered pieces work again. Sometimes we try to hang on to what’s been shattered and tattered. As your parents would say, stop it! Don’t keep chasing after what isn’t yours, because what’s calling you will keep calling until you answer. And it will get louder. Or to quote Fred Ebb again, “one day it’s kicks, then it’s kicks in the shins. But the planet spins, and the world goes ‘round and ‘round.”
So reach for the joy. Align yourself with cosmic joy and not with local pain. Take your shatters and tatters and use them to build something new and glorious, because either way, the world goes ‘round and ‘round.
Tim Phares, RScP