The Big Climb

From the time when you can talk in complete sentences, people are always asking "What are you going to be when you grow up?" I got asked all the time. Even before you can talk people speculate. The thing you are going to 'be' usually refers to the way you will make your living. Sometimes they mean something a little less superficial; ones state in life; married, single, priest, religious. These are the ways people define themselves. When I was little and people would ask it always seemed like they were checking up on me so I wouldn't forget I had a dead line coming up. "You have about twenty two years to figure out how you will define yourself to you'd better be thinking about it." It's a horrible terrifying thing to be the only seven-year-old you know who doesn't have a plan for the future. But where was I going with this.... SPLAT
The Catholic Church says (and I think Protestant Christians would agree) that how you make your living comes second to your personal relationship with your God. The most important thing about your state in life or your place in the world is how it leads you to Christ. Remember in the Gospel (and, typically, I don't remember where or which one it's in or where, silly Catholic) when John the Baptist is preaching and all these different people come to him and ask him what they should be doing with their lives? He tells the tax collectors to quit cheating people etc. pretty common sense, good morality. But the point is that he doesn't tell the tax collectors to get more respectable jobs, he just tells them to do their job honestly. Neither does he tell the soldiers to become tax collectors, they get to God as best they can from where they are. Each of them lives out their own vocation. Your vocation is supposed to be the surest path to God. Everyone is different and so is every one's vocation. (And every vocation fits within the Catholic Church, but that's another rant all together.)
Some years ago someone wrote a musical based on a real person's search for the surest path to God. There are a lot of musicals about people searching for God but this one was a little more explicit. It was especially beautiful in that the character is mainly concerned with loving people; whoever is around, and seeking Christ in them.

When you are looking for that surest path to follow to God there are two things people will tell you to do; (And I speak from personal experience) they will tell you to pray hard and they will tell you to think of every moment, every opportunity, and every person you meet as a vocation. Right now, my vocation is to be a student, a big sister (a little sister) a daughter and various other things. God leads us step by step. Live every day just walking with God in little ways and eventually you will look up and realize you are well on your way on the path God chose for you.

There is a good reason that Sound of Music is so famous. It because it's true; not just cause it's based on a true story, but because Maria's search for her surest path to God is so real. She has it all figured out. She has prepared herself all her life to join a convent. Then, God throws a wrench in her plans via Mother Superior. She is given a whole new place to serve God in a whole new way and has to resign herself to His will. She just takes it one day at a time, trying to understand why God has put her in the house of a sad widow with seven children. She is always guessing at Gods will and she usually gets it half right. She things she's there to prepare the children for their new mother and she's right, sort of, but not really. The amount of love she gives these children that she doesn't even belong to yet is tribute to the love she has for God. "Make me a channel of your peace" St. Francis prayed. That's what Maria is; a channel through which God pours His love on the Trapp family.

Then suddenly she finds herself messing up what she thought was God's plan. There is never a point where she sees that the Baroness is all wrong for the family. We see that as clear as anything, but she never wastes an uncharitable thought on the baroness. As far as she can see, it's God's will for the captain to marry the baroness. Then the baroness tells Maria that the captain is in love with her. That was not supposed to happen. And Maria is in love her him. That was Definitely not supposed to happen. She thinks she has done something terribly wrong. So she flies away back to the Abby where she is sure God really wants her to be. Wrong again. Rogers and Hammerstein did an amazing thing when they wrote some of the songs in this show. Climb Every Mountain is a pretty simple song with not too many words and a beautiful melody. It's a 'Something More' song that puts the search for a vocation into musical theater language. Your spiritual director doesn't usually tell you to follow every rainbow but he might tell you that after a storm, look for the surprise opportunity and open door. The 'dream' in the song is your path to God and it will need all the love you can give, every day of your life for as long as you live. Very cool.

God's plan for Maria is to be the bride, not of Christ, but Christ in Captain von Trapp and the mother of seven happy children. And she continues to live life one step at a time as God leads her.
You all know the songs so I wont tell you how much fun they are. Sometimes they get undervalued cause you hear them so much, but they really are popular for a reason. I really want to know if R&H wrote the vespers and the Alleluia at the beginning. I think they did. I like it.