\nBy Pastor Doug Slagle, The Gathering UCC
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/thegatheringcincinnati.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/up-movie-poster.jpg\" "\\"up")
<\/a>\n\u00a9Doug Slagle, 2010; all rights reserved.<\/p>\n
The film \u201cUP\u201d, which we will consider today, follows the life of Carl Fredrickson who finds himself at an advanced age, retired and alone after the passing of his wife.\u00a0 He retreats into his home and, for all intents and purposes, waits to die.\u00a0 Embittered, cynical and grouchy, Carl has lost any zest for life.\u00a0 And that leads to what I believe is the important theme of the movie.\u00a0 That is\u2026. how getting older often saps us of our life energy, our joy and our excitement.\u00a0 In that regard, I believe it is our fears and, ultimately, our fear of death that defines many of our thoughts and actions in life.\u00a0 Indeed, I believe those fears are the foundations for most world religions and forms of spirituality.\u00a0\u00a0 We seek a promise that we will not die and that something else controls our destiny.\u00a0 And, because of our fears and our supposed maturity, we lead cautious and unfulfilled lives where we die a slow death, day after day, year after year, decade after decade.\u00a0 We embody Franklin Roosevelt\u2019s famous pronouncement that the only thing we have to fear\u2026\u2026 is fear itself.<\/p>\n
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And in the movie Up, that is exactly what happens to the main character Carl.\u00a0 The one source of happiness in his life \u2013 his wife – is taken from him and so he, too, seems to simply decide to die.\u00a0 The movie answers, however, Carl\u2019s and our own fears with an adventure based solution.\u00a0 The movie promotes what I advocate here \u2013 a new way of thinking which, for us, can be a new<\/span><\/em><\/strong> form of spirituality.\u00a0 This new spirituality is focused NOT<\/span><\/strong> on finding answers to what happens when we die or how we might achieve eternal life, but on fulfilling the life that we have here and now.\u00a0 This spirituality says that we have been given the means to create heaven right now \u2013 even in this very moment.\u00a0 So, let\u2019s build it!!!!\u00a0\u00a0 As I discussed last week with the message of finding meaning in life, each and every moment we exist has meaning and purpose.\u00a0 There is no cumulative life purpose.\u00a0 Every one of our actions and each moment we live can be life enriching for ourselves and for others \u2013 or they can be life depleting.<\/p>\n The answer, I believe, is in living life without fear, and living instead with bravado, energy, love, service for others, curiosity, humor, innocence, and wide-eyed awe.\u00a0 Essentially, it is to lead life like a child.\u00a0 It is to never get so mature or so wise that we lose the inner child in each and every one of us.\u00a0 In the movie Up, that is the answer which Carl gradually discovers.<\/p>\n Watch with me now one of the most poignant four minutes of animated real life that I have ever seen.\u00a0 What we will see is a quick encapsulation of fifty years of married life between Carl and his wife Ellie \u2013 a woman he married because of her spirit, her \u201cjoie de vivre\u201d, and her passion for adventure\u2026(play marriage video of Carl and Ellie).<\/strong><\/p>\n And so Carl retreats into his home to mourn and to wait for his own death.\u00a0 But life, as is so often the case, has other plans for Carl.\u00a0 He meets a young boy who is a lot like himself when he was younger.<\/p>\n Watch now as Carl meets Russell\u2026(play video of Carl meets Russell).<\/strong><\/p>\n Eager and na\u00efve, Russell reinvigorates Carl and causes him to finally embark on the dream he and his wife shared \u2013 to visit and explore Victoria Falls in Venezuela and search for a rare bird.\u00a0 In a way that only takes place in fun-filled animated films, Carl inflates thousands of helium balloons and literally lifts himself and his house off the ground in order to float hundreds of miles away to Venezuela.\u00a0 Along the way, he collects a rag-tag menagerie of wacky misfits\u00a0 – a dog named \u201cDug\u201d \u2013 spelled \u201cd\u2026.u\u2026.g\u201d, the rare bird he seeks and his faithful Wilderness Explorer companion Russell, all of whom serve to annoy the cantankerous Carl.\u00a0 (Play video of Carl says \u2018go away\u2019)<\/strong><\/p>\n Carl gets the adventure he seeks and eventually winds up at Victoria Falls.\u00a0 He discovers that what he had found with his wife Ellie, the spirit of adventure and fun, was inside of him all along.\u00a0 He did not necessarily need a literal journey to find that truth \u2013 he only needed to explore within himself \u2013 to seek and find his inner child.\u00a0 And, I believe that is the message of the movie for each of us.\u00a0 We must capture, hold onto and celebrate the boy or girl inside of us \u2013 the playful, innocent and carefree person who does not feel entitled to anything except life itself, who finds meaning in every moment and who banishes fear and grabs onto the bull horns of life and rides it for all its worth.<\/p>\n During the time that Jesus wandered from city to city teaching his ideals of compassion, justice and concern for others, his disciples \u2013 like all adults \u2013 took the tasks of organization and supervision seriously.\u00a0 They were likely the ones who announced Jesus\u2019 visits and they would manage the crowds that came to hear him.\u00a0 One day a group of eager parents flocked to Jesus, each one holding an infant or young child.\u00a0 They wanted Jesus \u2013 this wise and great itinerant rabbi \u00a0\u2013 to bless the young ones.\u00a0 Immediately, the disciples tried to shoo away the parents and the children.\u00a0 \u201cGo away\u201d they probably said.\u00a0 \u201cJesus has serious and important things to say.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t have time to kiss babies!\u201d\u00a0 But Jesus firmly rebukes his disciples.\u00a0 The Biblical book of Luke says he told his disciples \u2013 and I quote from the translation version called \u201cThe Message\u201d, \u201cLet the children come to me. Don\u2019t stop them! For the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children. \u00a0I tell you the truth, anyone who doesn\u2019t receive the Kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n I believe Jesus was, in this passage, offering the kind of approach to life and the kind of spirituality of which I speak.\u00a0 Child like spirituality does not take everything so seriously.\u00a0 It does not worry about ultimate consequences or about the fear of death.\u00a0 Heaven, to a child, is the big sandbox over in the playground where sand castles are built and where life is lived out in play with others.\u00a0 Young kids get this.\u00a0 They naturally believe in Santa.\u00a0 They yearn for the Easter Bunny and happily dream about the tooth fairy.\u00a0 Life is about spending the night in a tent in the back yard and imagining you are on a safari to capture a wild lion.\u00a0 Kids tell silly jokes, they laugh, they don\u2019t worry about appearances or religion, or race or ethnicity.\u00a0 It is only when \u201cwise\u201d adults teach them to worry, to be careful, to slow down, to think about when they die, to notice differences\u2026\u2026 that they begin to lose their innocence.\u00a0 Jesus wanted none of that.\u00a0 In order to find heaven \u2013 the Kingdom of God – he tells his disciples that one first must be like a child.\u00a0 Indeed, Jesus might well have said that hell is acting too much like a cranky and wise adult!<\/p>\n Aldous Huxley, the late, great writer and humanist once said, \u201cA child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n More succinctly, the actor Christopher Meloni once said, \u201c<\/strong>You can be childlike without being childish. A child always wants to have fun. \u00a0Ask yourself, am I having fun?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n And it is not a worthless sentiment to say we should be more like children in our attitudes and thinking.\u00a0 Beyond encouraging us to keep a celebratory view of life, childlike thinking has been shown to be better for us than adult type thinking.\u00a0 In recent research by the Ohio State University, thinking like a child is shown to improve memory.\u00a0 One group of children and one group of adults were shown pictures of animals in a particular order.\u00a0 When asked to remember the animals and their order, the children scored better than the adults \u2013 and the younger the child, the better.\u00a0 When the two groups were shown pictures of imaginary animals and then asked to remember them and their order, the adults surprisingly scored just as well as the children.\u00a0 The researchers concluded that as adults, we think we already know many things and so we do not pay attention to minute details \u2013 like we do as children.\u00a0 That explained the different results from the two tests.\u00a0 Children paid attention to the real animal details and thus remembered them.\u00a0 These were new creatures to them.\u00a0 They did not think like the jaded and wise adults who likely said, \u201cseen one frog, seen \u2018em all!\u201d\u00a0 But, when shown imaginary animals, the adults paid attention and remembered the details.\u00a0 They recaptured their childlike way of thinking.<\/p>\n That is a lesson for me.\u00a0 Every time I am upset that I have forgotten something, I need to remind myself to essentially stop and smell the roses! – to look at things and the world with a sense of wonder; to take note of details; to think like a child!\u00a0 By doing so, I will have a better memory!<\/p>\n And Carl Jung, one of the father\u2019s of modern psychology and of whom I spoke in a message back in November, encourages people to have what he calls the \u201cartist \u2013 scientist\u201d attitude.\u00a0 This approach to life is characterized by wonder, boundless curiosity, creativity, exploration and energy.\u00a0 The ideal example of this type of person, according to Jung, was Benjamin Franklin who was a great inventor with a wide-ranging and inquisitive mind.\u00a0 He was also known for being extremely playful, a lover of wine and something of a libertine \u2013 he was a ladies man who had many female, bedroom companions.\u00a0 Jung says that while others try to change these types of people and force them to conform to cultural standards, that is an impossible task.\u00a0 The \u201cartist \u2013 scientists\u201d are those who move the world forward and who are never afraid to try new things or new ways of thinking.\u00a0 They are, essentially, adults with childlike attitudes.<\/p>\n Randy Paush, the late Carnegie-Mellon professor who became famous by delivering what he called his Last Lecture Series<\/span> as he slowly died from pancreatic cancer, said that we must never lose our childlike wonder.\u00a0 It is, he said, what drives us.\u00a0 Paush encouraged others to carry a crayon around in their pockets to remind them to approach life like a child.\u00a0 And, he urged his listeners to find joy in the little pleasures of life \u2013 like holding a lover\u2019s hand, playing with children or simply relaxing and reading the newspaper. \u00a0\u00a0\u201c<\/strong>We don’t beat the grim reaper by living longer,\u201d <\/strong>he said, \u201cbut by living well, and living fully \u2014 for the reaper will come for all of us.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Paush summed up his philosophy of life by comparing it to the attitudes of the animals in the stories of Winnie the Pooh.\u00a0 We can either be a Tigger \u2013 and joyously bounce through life \u2013or we can be an Eeyore, endlessly grumbling about the miseries of life.\u00a0 I have to laugh at that insight as Ed, who loves Winne the Pooh stories, will often playfully tease me when I act like Eeyore, \u201cOh dear.\u00a0 I messed up on that task.\u00a0 Everything is terrible.\u00a0 Oh dear!\u201d<\/p>\n As always, if we know how we are supposed to act, the big question \u2013 and the most difficult \u2013 is how do we actually live out the intended ethic?\u00a0 David Bohl, a therapist and writer of the online Blog entitled \u201cSlow Down Fast\u201d, writes that he follows threes steps in order to act childlike without acting childish.\u00a0 First, he writes, if you find yourself acting childishly \u2013 like Eeyore perhaps, stop yourself and go back and think about how you wish you had handled or thought about a situation differently.\u00a0 Second, he urges that each week we should experience at least one new thing or get to know one new person.\u00a0 Third, we should take ten to fifteen minutes each day, reflecting on the wonder in our lives.\u00a0 Finally, fourth, he asks us to practice his three A\u2019s \u2013 Be Alive, Be Aware and Be in Awe.<\/p>\n For each of us as we experience the frustrations of the aging process, we must also learn ways to cope.\u00a0 Yes, let us seek and find our inner child.\u00a0 Yes, let us banish the angry Carl in us who finds all of the joy sucked out of life.\u00a0 In a book published by Duke University and entitled Pressure Points<\/span>, all adults and especially those experiencing the frustrations of aging, should first of all turn their anger and frustration into action.\u00a0 Instead of suppressing frustration at the ravages of age, we should turn that energy into making changes in our lives to deal with the particular problem.\u00a0 If I am forgetful, what action can I take to help solve it?\u00a0 Second, the book urges that we defuse anger with laughter.\u00a0 A sense of humor will diminish any attitude of frustration or anger.\u00a0 Indeed, being able to laugh at oneself is a primary attitude of children.\u00a0 As Ed raced me in his car to church last week after I had forgotten about the time change, I railed against my forgetfulness.\u00a0 Fortunately, I caught myself and realized that being angry with myself would solve nothing.\u00a0 I could either enter here all upset and befuddled or I could try and make a few jokes out of the situation.\u00a0 That was so unlike me to have that attitude but I\u2019m glad I did.\u00a0 Laughing at myself helped me to relax.<\/p>\n Third, the Duke authors propose setting priorities in our lives as we age.\u00a0 Do only the important things and let go of the unnecessary.\u00a0 We should not demand that we do things that are non-essential.\u00a0 Fourth, as we age, we must be willing to ask for help.\u00a0 Finding support groups, therapists or the assistance of loved ones and friends are important.\u00a0 We should not isolate ourselves as we get older.\u00a0 Finally, and fifth, we should take time for ourselves and our own relaxation.\u00a0 There is nothing wrong with doing something we like to do \u2013 we should pamper ourselves.<\/p>\n As I watched the movie Up and as I prepared this message, I could not help but think of a good and dear friend of mine \u2013 a man I have known and spent regular time with for the past nine years.\u00a0 He is the anti-Carl.\u00a0 He epitomizes the ideal of living life with gusto and acting childlike without acting childishly.\u00a0 He is 86 years old, he is someone I want to be like and I invited him to church today to meet all of you and to hear this message.\u00a0 His name is Carroll White.<\/p>\n I first got to know Carroll at my previous church when I reached out to assist him as he cared for his wife who had then been diagnosed with Alzheimer\u2019s.\u00a0 Carroll was the kind of life partner everyone wishes they could be or could know.\u00a0 He was always at his wife, Alice\u2019s, side.\u00a0 He cherished her and cared for non-stop through the progression of her disease.\u00a0 Never angry, never frustrated and never acting like Eeyore, Carroll savored every moment with Alice.\u00a0 He loved it when she would smile, or, in the midst of her disease, offer some piece of advice that wives are wont to do, or even once, late into her loss of mind, sit up in bed and tell everyone in the room to be quiet \u2013 she was trying to sleep!\u00a0 Carroll laughed and laughed at that \u2013 not at Alice but at the spunk he still saw in her.\u00a0 When Alice moved to a nursing home, Carroll was still with her every day.\u00a0 But he was far from depressed at that situation.\u00a0 He joked with the nurses, put out bowls of candy for them so they would visit more often and began taking photographic portraits of them.<\/p>\n Carroll has been childlike \u2013 and not too childish! – as long as I have known him.\u00a0 He loves to workout and lift weights and he is stronger than I am on some of the machines.\u00a0 We regularly meet, often three times a week, to work-out together.\u00a0 Since Alice\u2019s passing four years ago, Carroll finds himself in great demand by women.\u00a0 He enjoys their company and often jokes or playfully teases them at the gym.\u00a0 He\u2019s even found a younger girlfriend \u2013 twenty years younger \u2013 with whom he finds companionship, friendship and love.\u00a0 He was in the hospital several weeks ago but, after being treated and feeling much better, he was released and three days later set off alone on a four hour drive to see his girlfriend.\u00a0 I remember thinking that might not be a good idea.\u00a0 But for Carroll that was life at its best and he was not going to worry if he was still a bit weak. \u00a0\u00a0He lives his life with joy, with a great sense of humor, with a love for people and a zest for trying new things.\u00a0 Indeed, when I invited him to come to church here \u2013 Carroll lives in Montgomery and I feared the drive might be a bit much \u2013 he did not hesitate.\u00a0 He jumped at the chance and even remarked that he wanted to see and experience something new.\u00a0 Indeed, there are not too many people who attend my previous church whom I think would be willing to venture down to Over-the-Rhine to our small, gay-friendly congregation.<\/p>\n I know so many here who are just like my friend Carroll White.\u00a0 You live your lives engaged in the world around you and I marvel at that.\u00a0 There is a youthful spirit here which causes us to look at the world not with a fear of change but with a desire to progressively move it forward.\u00a0 I believe life is too short to allow ourselves or this church to be concerned with being saved for heaven or with fears of an angry God.\u00a0 I believe we seek the form of spirituality and belief that cherishes the life potential here on earth.\u00a0 That is why we champion social justice issues, why we advocate for those who are marginalized or denied their human rights, and why we are compassionate in our thinking towards people who are poor, homeless or sick.\u00a0 The Divine moral imagination at work calls us to fulfill Jesus\u2019 words that the Kingdom of God is at hand \u2013 it is here and now.<\/p>\n This is, as I stated at the beginning, a new form of spirituality.\u00a0 It is not based in fear of what happens after our lives, it instead celebrates and works to improve what happens in our present lives.\u00a0 I believe this is childlike faith.\u00a0 Trusting in the goodness of others, concerned for the welfare of all and forgetting the dictates of man-made religions, this spirituality is life affirming<\/span><\/strong>\u2026\u2026instead of death fearing<\/span><\/strong>.<\/p>\n And childlike spirituality leads us to a similar mindset.\u00a0 Let us be exuberant in living.\u00a0 Let us wildly give, freely love and unashamedly champion the rights of all people.\u00a0 May we look out into our world with wide-eyed wonder and see the beauty in every person and everything.\u00a0 May we be ever curious and ever seeking \u2013 never afraid to learn new things and never reluctant to be different.\u00a0 Let me – let us, set free our inner child to revel in the goodness of life as we continue our calling to bring such joy to each and every person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" To listen to this message, click the play button below. It will take a bit to load. If you\u2019d like to download the message to listen to later, please right-click the download button (control-click on a mac). Message 15, Up, 3-21-10 By Pastor Doug Slagle, The Gathering UCC \u00a9Doug Slagle, 2010; all rights reserved. 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