Trying to See the Miracles

I came across this great interview the Phantom Tollbooth did with Mike Roe. He's the frontman, guitarist and vocalist of the 77's, and other great projects like the Lost Dogs. (Go to www.myspace.com/okcdrummerman or www.myspace.com/fungeye, and in the friends section click on "77's", and check out their music.) Mike tells it like it is.




Roe: Now I’m staring down a whole other part of my life I never could relate to except from parents and grandparents and I always looked at this part of your life as boring, and staid and stoic and consumed with money making and bill paying and aches and pains and, presto! That’s what it is! Sure enough. But I’m doing it my way. I’m not doing it the way my parents did it. I’m in pain, and I’m paying bills in my own style.

Tollbooth: So you’re hanging on to some of that identity you forged in your youth.

Roe: Well, they say in your forties you exchange all your emotional problems for physical ones. That’s a half truth. You retain your emotional problems, and add physical ones.

Tollbooth: Oh, lovely.

Roe: That’s if you haven’t lived right, if you haven’t done your homework. I don’t know, everyone goes through their own thing in their own time. Everyone has their own challenges and if you don’t screw up, someone else will, or some other thing will come along that will present you with a problem. Or several.

The Kingdom of God

What I’m trying to do, as much as possible, is focus on the positive, wonderful things about my life more, rather than when I was a lot younger, I took for granted those things. Because you feel like you are going to live forever, and you just assume the world owes you happiness and living. Now I don’t take anything for granted. Or I try not to. I still do, but I’m more conscious of being grateful rather than expecting that life is just going to go my way. I try to see the miracles in what I have.

It’s like, why doesn’t God heal anymore? Well, God just healed you of this, that and the other, it’s just that you take for granted the fact your body heals itself ninety-five percent of the time. It’s more like that. I’m living miracles every day., but that’s where you have eyes to see it and ears to hear it. I think that is the essence of part of what Christ’s teaching about the kingdom of God was about. That it’s within you, it’s around you, but you have to have the eyes to see and the ears to hear. He spent a good deal of his time telling stories in ways that would get people’s eyes and ears open to see what it was they could already be in possession of it they would just see it and then receive it.

Tollbooth: Yes, and that was God’s only son telling them those things.

Roe: Yes. So I have to believe that’s kind of a good paradigm for life, especially this part of my life where every day is a privilege.

Tollbooth: And you are very involved with your daughter, despite your divorce. Is that part of that paradigm?

Roe: That is absolutely. That is the paradigm. My daughter is just everything to me. I see the world through her eyes now rather than my own That’s made a big difference.



Yeah, the interview is copyright, so don't sue me. I liked a lot of things the Mike said here. One is learning how to be who you are, wherever you are in life. "I’m doing it my way. I’m not doing it the way my parents did it. I’m in pain, and I’m paying bills in my own style."

And that when you hit your forties, "Well, they say in your forties you exchange all your emotional problems for physical ones. That’s a half truth. You retain your emotional problems, and add physical ones." People will "screw up" -- "if you don’t screw up, someone else will, or some other thing will come along that will present you with a problem. Or several." Yet, the way is "being grateful rather than expecting that life is just going to go my way. I try to see the miracles in what I have. You have to have the eyes to see and the ears to hear. He [Jesus] spent a good deal of his time telling stories in ways that would get people’s eyes and ears open to see what it was they could already be in possession of it they would just see it and then receive it....I have to believe that’s kind of a good paradigm for life, especially this part of my life where every day is a privilege."

Good thoughts for today and every day.

Fr. Francis