Our final installation in the Academy Award series is Into the Woods, a film that didn’t get nominated for Best Picture Oscar. Still, it has much to say. I captured its relativistic approach in the new words to the old hymn tune Blaenwern – also singable to Hyfrydol – Nothing Once for All. The truth is that there are no absolutes outside of religious belief and Into the Woods exposes that truth by setting up our fairy tale expectations and then unraveling them one by one.
The Focused Moment prefers to stay in the realm of faerie tale where all is well and turns out beautifully. If you don’t believe it, you’ve probably grown up.
<
p style=”text-align: center;”>The moral of the story
tiptoes along in the background,
hiding behind the hedges,
lurking in the shadows.
Our hopes and dreams
are oblivious,
growing and swelling
along with the countless possibilities
that break into song at every opportunity.
All would be well –
skies blue,
dresses beautiful,
princes dashing and daring,
money easy and extravagances at every turn –
if it weren’t for that darned “moral of the story.”
<
p style=”text-align: center;”>Can we banish it?
Could we silence it?
Might we find someone else’s life it could affect?
Seems not.
<
p style=”text-align: center;”>Okay, then let’s celebrate
the moral of the story,
find a way to weave it into the here and now
and maybe,
just maybe,
it will shimmer a bit of faerie dust along its way,
and trail a glimmer of our dreams behind,
that as we live in the ordinariness of the day,
we might step into hope when we step into sunshine,
burst into song when a song is on the breeze,
and find beauty both within and beyond us,
tucked away,
in the moral of the story,
at the edge of each and every day.