Nothing heavy or sad or political or heartwrenching or disturbing. Nothing cheesy or tear-jerking or silly. Just a good entertaining flick.
Something like The Mummy.
The first time I saw The Mummy, it was on my television screen on a Sunday night as I was curled up in bed. When The Mummy Returns was released not long after, I made sure I bought movie tickets.
Films like these are meant to be seen on the big screen. They have the stuff that makes cinema an altogether enjoyable experience...adventure, mystery, suspense, intrigue, romance..all with historic Egypt as its perfect backdrop.
It it is there that Imhotep, "the Mummy", who since ancient times has been cursed with eternal suffering, is awakened when two camps of British and American expeditions crawl about the burial grounds of the ancient civilization. When the Book of The Dead is read aloud, the Mummy is unwittingly unleashed on the world, leaving nothing but death and destruction in his path.
It takes a little bit of time for the Brits and Americans to figure out that no amount of gun-slinging is bringing this Mummy down. As the character of Ardeth Bay, the head of the Medjai commissioned to protect the tombs, makes clear to them:
"He is the bringer of death," he declares. "He never eats. He never sleeps. He never stops."
Basically, until the Mummy is satisfied ~ or what he thinks is satisfaction ~ he is never going to cease killing and creating chaos in the world.
I started thinking about what Ardeth said, and it made me think of the "mummies" around us. I am pretty sure we all have come in contact them at one time or another.
I am not suggesting that most of us are living alongside monsters on a mission to annihilate people and knock down buildings like Imhotep the Mummy. Well, hopefully not. But there is no doubt we encounter the restless, the dissatisfied, the peaceless in our daily travels ~ and many of them attempt to bring their havoc into our own lives.
The "unleashing" comes in many forms. It could be as obvious as violent anger or as subtle as passive potshots. It comes in many a guise: a judgmental attitude, accusatory tones , hypercriticism, complaining, bullying, intrusiveness, antagonism, backstabbing, manipulation, even deceit...all if it spilling out and over into boundaries beyond their own ~ and into yours and mine to be exact.
These people don't stop. If they aren't going to have peace, nobody is going to have peace.
Or so they think.
The good news is that each of us can still find peace in spite of those folk who can't feel anything beyond their own misery and who can't seem to sympathize with anyone's pain but their own. For the most part, we can keep clear of the poison they want to inject into our lives, but we can also forgive them for their unrest, and we can wish them a better day.
As frustrating as it can be to deal with these "mummies" who create toxic clamor at home, in families, around the workplace, in the neighborhood, at school... it does help to remember that their fixation on others and making static all around them is what they do to avoid facing their own shortcomings. Indeed, "looking in the mirror" would very likely reflect an image as unattractive as The Mummy ~ and who wants to see that?
So, like Imhotep, these kind pick and pull at pieces of others who are minding their own lives, their families, their children, their homes, their goals, their challenges, their dreams, their business...wrongly thinking it will bring them a wholeness that they will sadly never find.
At the heart of the unrest could be pure evil like our favorite mummy Imhotep...but it is more likely to be borne from very human circumstances: low self-esteem, feeling unwanted, a hurtful past, the inability to forgive, depression, heartbreak, drudgery, a sense of hopelessness.
No matter what the source, let's pray today for those who spawn drama and cause disruption everywhere else because they lack real serenity within.
This week, as Christmas Day approaches, may its power of peace settle in all our hearts, a place where only we decide what lives there ~ or what dies there.
Have a wonderful, peaceful weekend. :)
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