A month or so ago, I hadn’t been well for a couple of weeks and was feeling somewhat down when I happened to come across a video on Youtube that featured a famous clip of theirs, the one in which they performed a great little dance in the street. But instead of their original music, someone had remastered it and melded the dance with a Santana song from the 1970’s. It was so realistic it could have been filmed just that way.  I watched it with sheer delight, giggling and laughing at their antics all the way through the dance. 

After watching it just a few minutes, my spirits were lifted right up, and I was transported back to when I was about 10 or 11, when my friends from school and I, would all go to the Saturday matinee held at a Liverpool cinema. The entrance fee was sixpence, and it would feature a program designed just for kids. There would be cartoons (remember Tom and Jerry, Sylvester the cat, Daffy Duck and many more?) and maybe a Western, a cowboy movie; Hop-along-Cassidy, Roy Rogers or John Wayne.  All the greats with their beautiful horses and “dopey” sidekick. But every few weeks we would be treated to a Laurel and Hardy movie, our favourite!   They were such clowns and so funny that we would be roaring our heads off laughing and all the way home on the bus, one or other of us would be saying “That’s another fine mess you’ve got me in Stanley!”  What a noise we made on the top deck of the double-decker!

While watching their extraordinary routine with its perfect timing I was struck again by the unique talents that human beings possess in the many fields of our endeavours. Here were these two men, performing some very complicated moves but making it look so easy and also so humorous; with their facial expressions and body language and so light on their feet as they danced the steps.  All purposely designed for laughter. 

On the other hand, Fred Astaire, who was also a Hollywood dancer extraordinaire, he could have carried out the same dance routine, but his would be executed with such grace and savoir faire that one would be left breathless and mesmerized - but not doubled up with laughter! 

This overwhelming sense of sheer wonder has come to me often in my life.  However, only since I came back to faith in God have I thought deeply about the many talents, capabilities and obvious gifts that have been endowed upon human beings. 

When I listen to Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto I am reduced to tears. The sheer magnitude of the composition and the powerful, heart-rending music that pours forth from the instrument can only have come from God’s inspiration. It’s almost beyond belief.  Likewise, as a person watches a ballet being performed or an opera being sung,  one has to believe that the hand of the Almighty has guided the humans as they were learning and practicing, over and over until they reached perfection; but not only that, consider the creativity of the composer of the music that is danced or sung and the imagination of the ballet choreographer. 

Having said all that, how can one compare the clownish, foolish capers of Laurel and Hardy with the splendour of a sweet, heart-breaking movement of a concerto or the astounding beauty of the Swan Lake ballet, or again, the empathy one feels for Lauretta as she sings:  O Mio Babbino Caro (Oh, my beloved daddy) from "Gianni Schicchi" by Giacomo Puccini?

Easily - when one considers that it is all creativity that comes from our souls, which is a gift from God!  A precious gift from God. 

There are so many other wonderful things on this earth that bring joy and pleasure to our lives.  The outstanding masterpieces that hang in the Tate Gallery and others, not to mention all paintings and drawings; I couldn’t draw to save my soul. My creativity lies in words and live theatre. I never stop admiring the way actors can bring a story and its characters to life, in a way that has the audience feeling that the play is real, the characters are real.

I  never get tired of remarking on the beauty of flowers, the intensity of their colours. Then something completely different but no less wonderful:  the remarkable countenance of a dog or a horse, or any other animal or bird - except maybe the crocodile and don’t get me going on spiders!  I’m sorry God, I know they are your creatures along with all the other living beings, but the sight of a spider will send me into hysterics.   All Gods creatures - all placed on earth for a reason by a very clever creator.  

But not just animals and flowers but all plants, all trees, all the rivers and the very soil we walk on in which all plant life can grow and flourish. The waters that sustain life itself. The whole planet, its construction and how everything that grows and lives on it are all interdependent and work together  creating a beautiful concerto of revolving life.

All placed here for our benefit! To feed us, clothe us, house us and give us pleasure.  Everything, even the things we have manufactured or discovered!  All placed with love as gifts, because the Father made us, loves us and wants only the best for us.  But the icing on the cake: is the creativity, the culture, that indescribable talent that enables us to turn what would be a rather mundane life into something wonderful, magical and out of this world.

Now, in the season of advent and with Christmas almost upon us we can ponder and ruminate on another miracle.  That of the birth of Jesus Christ, son of God, sent down to earth to be like us. To live among us, teach us, and then sacrifice his life for us, on the cross, in order that we may have salvation.

All these truths lead us to one conclusion; and that is that all humans - black, white, red, yellow, all beautiful, were created to soar and be memorable, just like Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Almost one hundred years ago they made a movie that can make us laugh still today and provide us with food for thought on the magnificence of God our Father and creator.