Carousel Choices

Last night we watched the Rogers and Hammerstein 1945 musical Carousel. With issues of domestic violence. knife crime and single parent families… with themes of ambition, dreams and hope… death, grief and regret… it speaks to life today.  

Set in a fishing community on the Maine coastline, Carousel tells the story of carousel worker Billy Bigelow’s romance with millworker Julie Jordan. It’s a story about choices. Julie chooses to go against everyone’s advice and falls in love with the unreliable, untrustworthy Billy.

In contrast, Julie’s friend Carrie chooses to marry the steady, ambitious fisherman, Enoch. Carousel shows us the results of those choices…

I reflected on yesterday’s conversations about the results of choices in friends’ lives:

…a teenage lad who’s choosing not to engage with those trying to help him, resulting in his mother’s anxiety.

…a woman choosing to invite her mother-in-law to live with their family, resulting in family tensions.

…a man choosing to put his wife with dementia into respite care, resulting in him feeling some guilt.

…a man choosing to continue attending our church, resulting in divided loyalties and family disagreements.

In Carousel… Billy’s choices result in violence and tragic death; Julie’s lead to grief and single parenthood. Enoch’s choices result in business success; Carrie’s lead to being mother to nine children!

This morning, I read Moses words to Israel: ‘I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children will live. (Deuteronomy: 30:19)

Central to Carousel is the song ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. First it’s sung as Julie’s with the dying Billy, then it’s sung sixteen years later as Julie and Billy are living with the results of their choices…

Whatever choices we make, whatever the results of our choices, we don’t walk alone. We walk with family, friends, community, our God…

Walk on through the wind
Walk on through the rain
Or your dreams be tossed and blown

Walk on! Walk on! With hope in your heart
And you’ll never walk alone.