Monday Morning Music Ministry

3-20-17

I hope you will indulge me a stroll down Memory Lane.

In one of my former lives – not that I believe in reincarnation; I have had several careers – I was a writer for Disney Comics. That was back in more innocent days. Having been weaned on Disney, “visiting” with Walt every week on TV, I had my own pair of Mickey Mouse ears when I was six. OK, I wore them into my 20s, but we all have our affections. OK, probably into my early 30s, but it’s my own business. Still on my wall office, amid a few other awards and citations, is my framed membership certificate, my name printed in red, in the Mickey Mouse Club.

My work with Mickey and Donald was back in the day when Disney comic books were experiencing a lull in interest. Superheroes, television, and video games were making it tough for the ducks and mice. Sales of the comic books were almost nil in the US… but thriving in Europe. So my work, at great page rates, and more pages assigned than I could well handle, was for European publishers. Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, England, Finland. I had monthly editorial meetings, either in New York City, or in Copenhagen.

I felt especial warmth for the late Uncle Walt in those days. Again, this was before days at Disneyland or afternoons watching a theatrical Disney cartoon were comingled with gay rights rallies.

Along that ride, I conceived of a story “hook” that I thought was pretty clever. Uncle Scrooge, Donald Duck, and the nephews, in the style (I hoped) of the master cartoonist Carl Barks, would be on an adventure, in a remote jungle, on a quest for treasure. They stumble upon an unknown small lake and discover, almost too late, what superstitious natives knew: it is the dreaded Fountain of Old.

The Fountain of Old, to be avoided – of course – at all costs: a sip of its waters turns you older… and older… and older. Eventually to die, if you drank enough.

A switch, of course, on the legendary Fountain of Youth that enticed and eluded Ponce de Leon and so many other explorers through the centuries. Ah! A happy twist on a popular legend. I don’t remember the details – whether Scrooge or Donald, or perhaps their rivals, drank of the waters; or fell into the lake; or got into a dilemma, or escaped. Immaterial now.

My editor nixed the story proposal. I was deflated; why? “Who ever heard of a Fountain of Old?” he asked. My response: “Nobody. That’s what will make it an interesting story premise.”

“No, Rick, it’s not plausible. How could there be such a thing?” he asked. I thought a moment, mostly incredulous. “Well, there can’t be such a thing. Neither can there be a Fountain of Youth, yet that is a common theme in history and fiction.”

“That is my point. Many people through the centuries have sought a Fountain of Youth. Nobody thought about a Fountain of Old,” he asserted. “Rick, it simply is not plausible.”

He was correct, or course. But irrelevant. We went back and forth. “Not plausible,” he had me there.

Finally I came to what was left of my senses, and I said, “Wait a minute. We are discussing talking ducks. The richest duck in the world, his irascible nephew; all dressed up top, and naked on the bottom. And mice who dress the other way around; and talk, and reside in suburban houses. A dog, Goofy, who has a “real” dog, Pluto. And so forth.

“Where does ‘plausible’ start and end?”

We all live in different realms of reality. And non-reality. We choose to live in these zones, and we choose to suspend belief or non-belief as, frankly, it suits us.

People who follow horoscopes and read tarot cards dismiss the Bible as mumbo-jumbo. Kids who are obsessed with superheroes don’t want to think about Jesus walking on water or through walls. Victims of terminal illnesses will grasp at copper bracelets and expensive herbal remedies and the Power of Wishful Thinking, but reject the Lord Who Healeth Thee – and discard documented cases of miracles.

What is plausible?

Is it “plausible” that the Creator of the infinite universe created each of us… loves us?… knows us and everything about us?

Is it “plausible” that such a God created us with free will, and that humankind chooses to sin, and that a Holy God cannot accept sinners in His heaven… but provided a substitution for the punishment we deserve? That He displayed His love – His willingness to forgive – by becoming incarnate, a spotless man-god whose death would be ransom for ours; whose resurrection would confirm His divinity; that belief in Him would save us unto Eternity? Is this plausible?

Is it “plausible” that we can have this God live in our hearts; an actual Holy Spirit who can fill us, guide us, comfort us, empower us?

Is it “plausible” that, while many millions throughout history have accepted this simple plan of Salvation, many, many other millions of people have rejected this God? Have cursed this gentle Saviour? Have blasphemed the Holy Spirit?

Is it “plausible” that so many people cling to superstition and errors and frauds and lies… and death? They can have life, and that more abundantly, despite the promise offered them.

These things are not only plausible; they are true. There is a supernatural world. There are spirit beings. Biblical miracles are documented and happening still today. These plausible truths are waiting to be embraced. Many people choose not to.

They reject the beautiful promises, the Truth of the Gospel. They choose to wander about in their ignorance and rebellion. Whether they know it exactly or not, they are looking for the Fountain of Old.

Rejecting Christ, they are sure to find it.
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“Escapist” entertainment. To America in 2017, the fantasy has become the reality. Is life in America so awful that we need to construct alternate universes, false heroes, and new versions of what is genuine, authentic, and… real?

Click: It’s a Small World, After All

5-23-16

Back when I was a writer for Disney Comics, I was given a bible – not the Holy Bible, although it had the properties of life and death in its pages. Like “script bibles” or “story bibles” in filmmaking and TV series, it is a summary of characters, personalities, traits, and background data, to keep writers and artists on-target. The essence was plainly stated: “Stick as close to Barks and Gottfredson as you can.”

Many of us grew up with Disney comics, and the definitive creators, although they were anonymous at the time, were Carl Barks (“the Duck Man”) and Floyd Gottfredson, who drew all the Mickey adventures. What a dream: write and draw like Carl and Floyd (each of whom I was blessed to know), and get paid for it.

I had monthly conferences with my editors, and for a while things went swimmingly. I even bought a house from all the stories I wrote. But there was one major bump in the road that I remember, decades later.

Scrooge McDuck and his nephews often set out on adventures. Humor and suspense, mysteries and slapstick, conflicts and surprise endings – what fun to dream up those stories. Once I was excited to invent a premise that contained a “switch” on a famous historical legend. Just as the Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon sought the mythical Fountain of Youth, I wrote an outline with Scrooge, Donald, and the nephews coming across the Fountain of Age.

The story possibilities were great. Of course Unca Scrooge inadvertently would drink from it; his instant decrepitude would be more than dismaying; it would materially threaten their quest in that story – I think it was a race against his rival; the attempts to counter the guzzling could be funny; and so forth. I was surprised, for all the ink spilled over the centuries about the Fountain of Youth, that nobody ever utilized its opposite as a possible storyline.

One of my editors, in a meeting, rejected it out of hand. “A Fountain of Old? That’s nonsense; it can’t be possible.” No; other editors tended toward my point of view; there could indeed be minerals or properties that could speed the aging process. Maybe a local tribe of elderly looking people could warn Donald and company at the last minute.

But that one editor persisted. “It simply doesn’t make sense that there could be a fountain, or a lake somewhere, whose waters make you age rapidly.”

I remember the session. After a moment of silence, I looked around the room and said, “Wait a minute. We are dealing with ducks here – ducks that walk and talk and dress themselves. One of them is richest duck in the world, and we carefully make sure he has his top hat, spats, and cane, every story. Huey, Dewey, and Louie, each of whom speaks a third of a sentence. Talking ducks!!!” And we were stymied about a plot where a hidden lake’s water aged you quickly.

The larger absurdity – or maybe it was ultimate logic – was that a room full of grown men, indeed an entire industry, made careers out of creating a “universe” of talking ducks and mice. The logic rested in the fact that the American public (and the world’s population, deep down) likes fantasy.

I was struck at the time (by the way, the story did make print), and I still am impressed, by the fact that many of the world’s great stories and legends have to do with water. Of course water is elemental source of life, irrigation, navigation, and all manner of sustenance: no mystery. Considering the dramatic possibilities – but not to be over-dramatic – the great poets and artists and writers and dramatists did not enthuse over air in the same manner as water.

Yes, they breathed; and manned flight might have been more of a technical challenge awaiting these professions. But, for instance to my case, humankind could have ventured into the waters of the world to fish… and been satisfied. But rivers became roads beckoning elsewhere; seas and oceans were irresistible, if frightening, gateways to the unknown. And we are back to Fantasy’s role in humankind’s DNA. From the arts to commerce.

The first chapters of Genesis make seemingly disproportionate references to water and “the waters.” It was through a Flood that God first judged the human race. Water, throughout the Bible, is a “type” of the Holy Spirit over and over. Jesus turned water into wine… His FIRST miracle. When Christ’s side was pierced on the cross, it is reported that both blood and water flowed. Start searching for references to water in the Bible and you will be deluged, by the number of them, their variety, their significance.

Are any of them references to a Fountain of Youth?

In a way, yes. The fourth chapter of John records that Jesus encountered a Samaritan woman who was drawing water at Jacob’s Well. He asked her for a drink and she was surprised, since she was a despised foreigner. Nevertheless she was sarcastic when He said that she would thirst again from the world’s water but He offered water after which no one would thirst again.

She still scoffed, and then He identified her as an adulteress, and other facts that made her call Him a prophet. But He said of Himself that, more, He was the Christ, and His meaning became clear. As clear as pure water.

Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”  The woman then said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

Augustine has explained that the woman was a “type” of the world, the coming Church, for whom Jesus came: gentiles, pilgrims, and strangers who needed the Living Water. “So the woman left her water jug and went into town and said to the people, ‘Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this indeed be the Christ?’”

Truly Jesus provides – and is – the Eternal Water of life. It occurs to me that we all, in a way, are drinking from a Fountain of Old without really intending to do so; and we scurry about, all our lives, looking for a Fountain of Youth – or some other elixir of life, happiness, or prosperity.

And we thirst again, and again. And again. What odd ducks we are.

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Click: There Is a Fountain

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