Recently, NBC has been helping to promote musicals. Last year, they had a very successful TV event with a live performance of The Sound of Music, starring Carrie Underwood. The show was so successful that they decided to do another. On December 4, NBC will be showing Peter Pan live. We’re looking forward to it.
Peter Pan is something of a mixed bag. Its score is listed as being by Carolyn Leigh and Moose Charlap, but the producers brought in the well-established team of Betty Comden, Adolph Green, and Jule Styne to replace a large part of the score.
I want to focus on two songs, one by Charlap and Leigh and one by Comden, Green, and Styne. The first song is Charlap and Leigh’s “I’m Flying”.
In the song, Peter teaches the Darling children to fly. First he sprinkles fairy dust, then he tells them that the key to flying is to “think lovely thoughts.”
“Think lovely thoughts” and you fly – isn’t that the Law in action? If you want your life to soar, think the loveliest thoughts you can and watch the results you produce.
But there is even more to be drawn from the song than that. There is a lesson in these lyrics:
I’m flying
(Flying, flying, flying)
I can soar
I can weave and what’s more
I’m not even trying.
For Peter, soaring is easy and effortless. He has mastered it. Reaching the heights in life is something Peter does without even trying.
In “Neverland” by Comden, Green, and Styne, Peter sings about his home, Never Never Land, Peter says:
I have a place where dreams are born,
And time is never planned.
It’s not on any chart,
You must find it with your heart.
And Peter goes on to say:
You’ll have a treasure if you stay there,
More precious far than gold.
For once you have found your way there,
You can never, never grow old.
Could fairy dust represent the substance of the Universe, abundantly sprinkled in our lives? Is it symbolic of the treasures that are “added unto you” when you seek to express the Kingdom in your own best way?
And never growing old is indeed a treasure. On his 90th birthday earlier this year, former President George H.W. Bush jumped out of an airplane. Charles Fillmore, the co-founder of Unity, wrote in his 94th year, “I fairly sizzle with zeal and enthusiasm as I spring forth with mighty faith to do that which ought to be done by me.” Neither of these men seems to have grown old.
I have long said that I fully intend to die young — at a VERY advanced age! The way that you do that is to live passionately and fully, to find your very own Neverland and live out your purpose as fully as you can. As Rev. Dr. Kathy Hearn said, “Find out who you are and do it on purpose. Organize your life around it.”
Henry David Thoreau tells us to “do what you love. Gnaw your own bone. Gnaw it, bury it, dig it up, and gnaw it still.” This is as much a set of directions to Neverland as “second star to the right and straight on till morning.”
Where is your Neverland? What treasure would you find following your heart that so energizes you that you can never, never grow old?
When we let Divine Principle guide us, we open to the greatest there is to be. Living in the realm of the lovely, we soar to a treasure more precious than gold. Be the biggest, best opening for God that you can be, and let yourself fly.