Blog 670 – 06.21.2017
Take My Hand

Sometimes the most beautiful love stories are found in perhaps unlikely places. On Father’s Day I saw for the second time at the movies, Guardians Of The Galaxy 2. You might think me crazy for saying it but I wanted to see it again for to me it is a wonderful Father’s Day movie about a boy searching for his dad across the galaxy. Like in many love story a true appreciation of love is only found after it is lost. At the funeral scene at the end of the movie Peter Quill, the Star Lord, realizes who his true daddy was and remarks that his true dad was – not David Hasselhoff as he had wished as a boy nor the god Ego who conceived him but the man who raised him and was always there for him. Peter’s words over his hero daddy sound a lot like Dorothy’s of Kansas/Oz. His “words were, “Sometimes you look for something all your life and realize perhaps too late that it was right there beside you all the time.” And hers were, “Sometimes you go looking for happiness far from home only to realize it was always right there in your own backyard.”

The First Guardians Of The Galaxy movie begins with a young Peter standing at the bed side of his Mom who is dying of brain cancer. She holds out her hand to her tearful son and says, “Peter, take my hand.” He refuses knowing that she is about to die and believing that if he takes her hand that she will be able to let go of life and leave him. She dies anyway and he screams regretting that he cheated himself out of her last warm touch and his Mom of the comfort of last holding her son’s hand. He runs out of the hospital to be immediately abducted by a space ship of space Ravengers hired to take him to his father. The head guy does not deliver the boy, keeping him instead because he says Peter is little and handy to get into small places and help the gang steal, not the real reason we later learn.

I recently related the story of how Peter Quill, and his friends became known as The Guardians Of The Galaxy to a friend. I retell it here for you. After a lot of finding and losing of a powerful stone that can destroy all life on a planet and completely peel and burn to death any human that touches it the villain of the story finally has it and has made it to the surface of a planet with billions of people and is about to make that planet his first example before destroying the whole galaxy. Peter Quill and his cohorts are all that stand in the way to stop him. A trembling crowd is watching. The Star Lord and gang plan to keep the destroyer from touching his staff with the stone on it to the ground and destroying them and all organic life on the planet. The bad guy says to the crowd in ridicule, “Behold your guardians of the galaxy.” Quill dances up to the villain singing one of the songs from his Awesome Mix Vol. 1 tape that his mother gave him. The madman yells, “What are you doing?” Peter replies, “I’m distracting you.” At that precise moment, Rocket Racoon, the genetically modified racoon, mechanical genius and weapons expert, fires on the bad guy dislodging the stone from his staff. As the stone flies free, in slow motion Quill and the villain reach for it. Peter grabs it first and stands there glowing, peeling, and for far longer than anyone else ever has. The gorgeously green lady Gamora on the team, Peter’s love, comes up on his right and says, “Peter, take my hand.” He sees his mother in a vision and will not miss a second chance to connect to the woman he loves. He holds her hand and she shares the overwhelming power of the stone. Drax touches Peter’s left shoulder, beneath which shoulder his left hand is tightly gripping the stone. Rocket reaches up to touch Drax’s left pinky finger. Both he and Drax also share the charge, all four surviving (Groot, the tree-like creature and team member had already been blown up.) The villain shouts, “How are you able to hold the stone without dying?” The Star Lord replies, “You said it yourself, we are the Guardians Of The Galaxy.” Peter shoots a beam from the hand holding the stone that destroys the would be destroyer.

One of Glenn Campbell’s perhaps least remembered but beautiful love songs is on his album titled Galveston. The lovely and haunting words of that song say:

“Take my hand for awhile explain it to me once again just for the sake of my broken heart.”

Hearts must break to grow larger and to become bigger better conduits for love to flow from and into. The great lovers always know that love is the strongest and most rewarding when flowing out rather than in and are therefore most grateful to the heart breakers that make their hearts grow so that they are able to love more and more. Take somebody’s hand and show them you love them today. It might be theirs or your last chance. Don’t miss even one chance.

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White