When ghosts are your friends

Many of us had imaginary friends when we were children, and many of us had a favorite doll or stuffed animal as in “Calvin and Hobbes,” some of us had several, with whom we would carry on conversations. Some of us would talk to a favorite pet, and many carry this into adulthood. The old maid talks to her pet cat, and so do the old fellows like me. In my case, I have found the resident cat to be without conversational skill; nevertheless I still speak to it, and when I look at her and ask “Feed the cat?” I do get a positive response, a soft “meow.” However, that’s as far as any dialogue with the cat goes.

Few of us have the good fortune of a “Harvey” as a companion, and most of us quite reasonably have our doubts about those adults claiming to have the benefits of an invisible companion. And while there are innumerable claims for “manifestations” of ghosts, I have yet to see one. I have a real ambivalence about this, not being quite certain I really want or do not want to be the beneficiary such a manifestation. While I believe I live with ghosts, I haven’t any idea if this is true, or, for that matter, just what form my departed loved ones and friends have taken since their departure.

The realities of life are difficult to deal with, and at times some of us need our invisible friends. It is a reality that counterfeiting is such a problem many businesses will not accept one-hundred dollar bills in order to lessen the loss. Document fraud and identity theft are real and ugly, growing realities. I think I can be forgiven for times when I believe the cat understands these things better than those in our government.

So I consider the ghosts of my loved ones and friends to be understanding of me. It is my belief they know me thoroughly in a way not possible to our loved ones and friends still inhabiting mortal bodies. And oftentimes I have been prevented from doing something wrong not because I fear God may be there waiting to punish me either now or later at some assize, but because I have loved ones I do not want to hurt. In most ways, I suppose this a better rule for moral behavior than any system of religion.

Existentially Emerson might have been correct, but perhaps the world is only a stage and all of us only players upon that stage? Perhaps nothing is real except my own mind, this fire of life in a mortal body that transcribes everything and everyone I see from phantasmagoria to my perception of reality? This much I believe; for too many life is a living hell on earth, a seeming lunatic asylum with the chief lunatics running the asylum, an asylum where evil seems to predominate and there is room for believing the “Monsters of the Id” are more than the stuff of SciFi, and only occasionally do the better angels of humankind prevail.

I am not going to judge those who believe “The play’s the thing.” But I do wonder what is it that compels some to strive to play a role of fantasy? Do they live such fantasies in their own minds? Psychologists and psychiatrists, our contemporary witch doctors and shamans, expend enormous amounts of time “explaining” the attraction of stage and film to so many wishing to play a role. And it is not always out of the desire for fame and fortune, not even the desire for attention but sometimes the need is to simply escape from reality.

It is quite normal for children to engage in fantasies just as the children in “To Kill A Mockingbird” made up a game about Boo Radley, acting out parts of the story they had invented about this neighborhood boogeyman. But as the Apostle Paul pointed out, when he was a child he thought, acted and spoke as a child, but when he became a man he put away childish things. And I suppose most of understand the difference between childishness and being a child. Paul did not intend a discourse on the fantasies of children carried into the realm of adulthood and was fully knowledgeable of the Greek and Roman stage given to much more than fantasies, and none would disagree the world would be impoverished without Shakespeare; and few would want to give up the marvelous fantasies of Hollywood like the great musicals. But in looking at last year’s crop of Oscar nominees it seemed Hollywood has painted itself into a corner, and having been raised on the great films of time past I cannot but feel a certain sad melancholy about the low estate to which this great American institution has fallen.

Children like Scout, Jem, and Dill enjoy the “theater” they invent for themselves, they enjoy a lively imagination in which all things are possible, things of fairy tales and magic come to life. The world would be a dreary place without the laughter and imagination of children giving life to the fairy tales and magic properly the domain of childhood. Still, as Paul pointed out there is a difference between those things the proper domain of childhood and childishness. We want children to be children, we want adults to be adults. Where Hollywood has departed from being a great American institution is in becoming “childish.” In too many ways what Hollywood has engaged in is throwing childish tantrums, demanding attention be given the demands of the spoiled brat, the kind of child no one wants around them.

The result of this spoiled brat and its tantrums is people staying away from theaters in droves. There is no more “Here’s lookin’ at you kid,” no more “bright, golden haze on the meadow,” but a self-absorbed, spoiled brat demanding attention be given its childish version of “reality.” And it seems the MSM is fixated on a very shallow celebrity rather than hard news. It is almost as though the realities have become so monumentally bad the MSM simply cannot cope with them.

This reminds me of the book of Job in the Old Testament, which is thought by some to be the most ancient text in the OT, dealing with issues from the most distant past of human history. It is from this ancient story we have the thought Jesus emphasized that Satan holds dominion over the kingdoms of the world, but that his rule is doomed in the end to failure. This is cold comfort to those like abused, tortured and murdered children, to the innocent suffering from the wars of men. But there is little from Hollywood about this story of Job, except in passing. And I doubt there will be a musical version of the story.

What drew Americans to the Silver Screen in time past, what made Hollywood successful was largely the desire to escape the ugly realities of life. As an art form, Hollywood used to give us that kind of escape from ugly realties. We had the great books delving into the dark side of humankind, but it didn’t take Hollywood long to explore this as well. But the advantage of a book is being able to lay it aside and come back to it in our own time. And while Hollywood has produced acclaimed “masterpieces” delving into the dark side, it is those great films in which virtue prevails, in which there is great beauty and hope lifting people up from their often lives of quiet desperation, too often lives lived with ugly realities from which the Silver Screen granted some respite and surcease of sorrows that made Hollywood an American institution, and I miss that Hollywood.

Whatever the “reality,” I believe the ghosts of my loved ones and friends gone on before me understand. I believe their “angels” know my thoughts, I believe we have spiritual communion though I neither see nor hear them. I find comfort in believing this, and while far from original thinking, but quite the contrary, my most fervent hope is to rejoin these loved ones and friends when I pass away. I can only hope in the words of Scripture that if this happens “all tears will be wiped away.”