Come On People! We’ve Got Some Diem to Carpe

“Come on Steve! We’ve got some Diem to Carpe!” I can’t get that line out of my head. I heard it in all places coming from a movie that I was watching with my six-year-old son Joel during the Blizzards of 2010, called “Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs.”
And after all the snow that has poured out of the sky down here in South Jersey these last few weeks, giant pancakes with butter and syrup floating down from the heavens sound a whole lot more appetizing than what we’ve all been digesting lately from Mr. Meteorologist!
Anyway the movie is a cute story about life on the make believe small island of Swallow Falls and an outcast boy named Flint Lockwood who is a clumsy inventor and a failure in everyone’s eyes except the gaze of his encouraging and affirm-ing mother.
The island has not done a very good job in being able to export their over-abundance of sar-dine stocks, and the locals end up having to eat sardines all the time.
As time passes, Flint’s mother dies and his skeptical father Tim Lockwood, an old fisherman who has a bait and tackle shop, gives Flint a partnership in his store and invites him to work there with him.
But Flint, being the inventor at heart that he is, has just invented a food processor that converts water into food. When he decides to test it out, things don’t exactly go according to plan and he manages to launch it into the atmosphere. As a result, it begins to rain hamburgers and other foods to order on to the island.
A television station sends a weather reporter brainy trainee named Samantha Sparks to cover the phenomenon and Flint becomes famous. However, the greedy and gluttonous Mayor Shel-bourne overworks the machine and the food becomes a menace not only to those who populate Swallow Falls, but now to the whole wide world.
As Flint begins to tackle the challenge of short circuiting this potential culinary catastrophe, there is a scene where he cries out to his pet monkey named Steve these immortal words that won’t leave my brain alone, “Come on Steve! We’ve got some Diem to Carpe!”
Carpe Diem is a phrase from a Latin poem by the Roman, “Horace.” It is popularly translated as “seize the day!” Actor Robin Williams, playing the Professor John Keating in the movie Dead Poets Society, made it a cultural catch phrase when he pronounced it boldly as an inspirational kick in the pants to his students who were not being aware of the gift that life truly is.
Keating, as he gathers his students around an old trophy case in the school hallway says, “They’re not that different from you, are they? Same haircuts! Full of hormones, just like all of you! Invincible, just like you feel.
The world is their oyster. They believe they’re destined for great things, and just like many of you their eyes are full of hope! Did they wait until it was too late to make from their lives even one iota of what they were capable? Because, you see gentlemen, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils. But if you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you. Go on, lean in. Listen, you hear it? Carpe, hear it? Carpe, Carpe Diem, Seize the day boys! Make your lives extraordinary.”
Carpe means “enjoy, make use of, to go after it with everything you’ve got.” And while watching this cartoon movie with my son Joel, I was reminded to ask myself that very question, “How am I living these precious days that I have been given as a gift from the Lord on high?”
Not everybody has been given today. There are many who would give all that they own to have and live what you and I have and live. Are we taking it for granted? Are we staring at the ground when we should be shooting for the stars? The main message of “Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs,” is to not allow anybody else to dictate the life that deep down inside you know that you have been called to live. We all know whether we are just putting in time or truly treasuring each precious second on the game clock of life.
The sad part is that many of us will die with the ball in our hand never ever having the courage to get off our best shot! Not just any shot- but the best shot that you have been created to make and given the opportunity by God to take! Shoot the ball, we can’t win if you don’t try!
I am amazed at how many of us are content to be benchwarmers these days. I see it at church, at work, when kids go to school and even as I coach sports. There was a day when every kid wanted to get in the game. Now I actually have kids who ask if they can “sit this one out!” I don’t want to sit this one out especially if this is my moment to Carpe some Diem!
Will everybody be pleased? Probably not! But when it comes right down to it, there are only two that you must be true to, and that is first to the God who made you and then second, to the real you that you really know you were always meant to be.
In the movie, Flint’s Mom gave him the gift of a scientist’s lab coat. When she gave it to him, it didn’t fit him yet, but because of faith and love and the freedom to go after his dream, he grew up nicely right into it.
I want to give you the gift of permission to join together let’s Carpe and some Diem! This week, rather than looking for the way out, jump in and make an impact and go after it just because you can. The blizzards of life are going to come to each and every one of us, and that is why every now and then, we could all use someone who can bring us ice cream sundaes falling from the sky!
As Mr. T would say, who actually plays one of the funniest characters in the film, “I pity the fool who foolishly wastes the day!”
Write Pastor Rudy pastorrudytlc@comcast.net