A Life Lesson from Sister Act II

“Rita Louise Watson! You better get your behind back in here…”

If that line carries a ring of familiarity and the image of a young Lauryn Hill, you probably grew up watching Sister Act II just like me. My friend Steph and I wore out a VHS tape with our exhaustive viewing. We can recite the script along with the actors and dance the film’s choreography. To this day, we have been known to sit down with a bowl of popcorn on a Friday night and fast forward through the movie from musical act to musical act, just so we can sing along with one of our favorite collections of songs ever compiled in one place. We love Sister Act II.Growing up, I wanted to be Rita, the movie’s main character. I wanted her beauty, her funky wide-leg jeans, her voice—one of the most breathtaking I have heard to this day. And I related to her restlessness. Rita is a tremendously talented singer, but her mother thinks music is impractical and thus forbids her daughter from it. Consequently, Rita fronts a bad attitude that guises the pain and disappointment she feels because she cannot pursue her love of music.

I related to Rita’s struggle to integrate what she loves with the reality of who she is. She knows that she wants to be a singer, but life’s circumstances seem to obstruct the possibility of actualizing that dream. As a teenager in inner city San Francisco with an unsupportive mother, how could she actually become a singer?

At a turning point of the film, Rita’s music teacher, Sr. Mary Clarence (played by Whoopi Goldberg), confronts the teenager about her bad attitude. Clarence sees right through Rita, charging that the teen’s bad attitude is getting in the way of what she really loves—music—and who she really is—a singer. Goldberg gives Rita a copy of Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet,” and, appropriating Rilke’s message in the book, the teacher tells Rita, “If you wake up every morning and the first thing you think about doing is singing, then you’re supposed to be a singer, girl.” After reading the book, Rita realizes that she may or may not become the type of singer that she dreams of being someday, but her frustration with that is presently keeping her from being the singer that she already is.

I’ve been thinking about Rita’s paradigm shift a lot lately because so many people my age struggle with the disparities between the life they have and the dreams they want to live out. Friends are grateful for employment, but often say, “This is not the life I dreamed of. This is not who I am. This is not what I love.” This can feel incredibly disheartening and discouraging at times, and the overwhelming realization that one is not living the life he/she desires can often be paralyzing. It is easy to see the obstacles that lay in the path to the future, rather than focusing on the steps we can take within the space of the present.

Rita was so disheartened by her dream of becoming a singer that she stopped singing in her present community. I keep reminding myself that anxiety about dreams for the future should not stop me from living out my loves in the present. I may not have a book, but it doesn’t mean I am not presently a writer of sorts. I may not have a degree but it doesn’t mean I can’t do theology today. We can’t think about tomorrow in a way that keeps us from living today.

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