What Will You Celebrate?

What Will You Celebrate? is the Walt Disney World Theme this year and it really is a lot of fun to play with. When you come to the parks you can get an "I'm celebrating..." button. We have several that are personalized like Happy Birthday, Just Married, Just Engaged, Family Reunion, and Happy Anniversary. But there is also just one that says, "I'm celebrating" and you write on the bottom what it is you are celebrating. I have one that says, "I'm celebrating graduation" but my favorite is the one all my roommate and I got alike that says, "I'm celebrating my day off." Disney is big on cast member guest interaction and it is a really easy way for us to start a conversation with complete strangers. There are a lot of cast member who comment on our "day off" buttons then find out we work at Disney too. I think we've started a trend cause I saw one of the cast members who saw mine with one yesterday.

The other day I was trying to help pass some of the wait time with some guests and saw they had the engagement buttons on. So I congratulated them and then turned to the girl and said, "So, did he do a good job?" She goes, "Oh man, he did amazing!" Then proceeded to tell me exactly how and where he proposed. It was so fun because she was so happy with him and it was obvious he enjoyed seeing her so happy to tell a complete stranger about how he proposed to her. Before we knew it we had talked about him proposing, her ideas for her wedding, and some places they had thought about for the honeymoon and passed about 15 mins.

It so neat to work here. Most people will just talk with you like that, if you'll start the conversation. Part of it is because when i have my Toy Story costume on i represent a mouse that's at least a small part of most every one's childhood. But I also think that part of it is because people want to connect with other people. Since I've been down here, I've seen so much spiritual application in what we're being taught to do as cast members. Little things that I would absolutely love to see happening in church. One of them is the way they teach us to start conversations and build little mini-relationships with the guests. But the other that I realized this week is a habit of celebrating.

A few of my roommates are catholic and because lent started last Wednesday I've had some cool conversations with a couple of them about what they believe and what I believe and I'm learning a lot from them. One of them has a daily devotional type of book for lent. She got me a copy and we are reading through it together and we talk about the stuff in it every few days. I really like it because in addition to scriptures and devotional thoughts it also talks a small bit about a specific piece of catholic history or tradition.

Last Friday the devotional thought was from Mt. 9:14-15 about feasting. It started by acknowledging that it probably seemed strange to have a passage about not fasting so close to the beginning of lent. But it went on to point out the reason we feast, basically coming down to a feast being a usual part of celebration. During lent there are certain days that you fast from certain types of food and drink, but Sunday is not one of those days. It talked about how every Sunday should be remember as a mini-Easter and that Sunday was a day for celebrating, a day for feasting. Then it challenged the reader to find a way to celebrate what God has done specifically on every Sunday, but also each and every day of the week.

It was neat to find a challenge to "Celebrate" this week even in something not Disney. :-)