this lent i feel like dancing...

To be alive: not just the carcass 
But the spark. 
That’s crudely put, but … 

If we’re not supposed to dance... 

Why all this music?
(Gregory Orr, On Being, May 30, 2019)

I heard Gregory Orr share this poem last week on my ride home from Ottawa. It was on one of Krista Tippett's On Being shows (May 30, 2019) that I listen to as a podcast. It keeps rising to the surface of my heart at the oddest times, so I have a hunch it is becoming my mantra for Lent:"if we're not supposed to dance ... why all this music?!?" Why, why, indeed?

When our daughters were babies I used to dance with them throughout the day: I remember holding our first born in the crook of my arm as we bobbed and weaved to Elton John's "Bennie and the Jets." A few years later in NYC at Union Theological Seminary, our second daughter and I wavered between "Sultans of Swing" (Dire Straights) and Da Dannan's take on "Hey Jude."

It does my heart good to see children dance - and I grieve when they cannot for whatever reason. I think of those children incarcerated at our border who ache to dance every day with as much abandon as my grandchildren (whom we'll see this weekend) but are locked in a cage. That image clarifies for me what is at stake this November. Maybe that's why this Lent doesn't feel like a time to give up dancing. Rather, I need to be as embodied and filled with as much beautiful life as I can grasp. And share it. And encourage others to join in with their own footloose abandon in solidarity with those children even if there are times we might temporarily feel a bit sluggish. This is a time to be alive - not just a carcass - even if your spark feels weak. 

A few friends have recently turned me on to the poet David Whyte. Making a commitment to move through this Lent - and this election cycle - like a dance feels a lot like this poem, "A House of Belonging." Every day someone helps me see one of my blind spots. Every day there is a chance for me to respond with a little bit of gratitude. Every day I can listen carefully for the beat and move to the rhythm of grace. There was a really old woman at the grocery store this afternoon who couldn't get her cart untangled. I came up and we tried together but it was hopeless. Standing there in the silence we both felt defeated - and then it hit me: "Oh, please," I blurted out, "take my cart, ok? It's only a quarter - and I've got a few more in the car." (You need to put a quarter in a slot to get the cart unhooked.) The unexpected smile that creeped across her face was a gift. I don't always remember to do simple things like that most days, but there are those sometimes. Maybe moving to the dance will help. Whyte puts it like this:

I awoke
this morning
in the gold light
turning this way
and that

thinking for

a moment

it was one

day

like any other.

But

the veil had gone

from my

darkened heart

and

I thought

it must have been the quiet

candlelight

that filled my room,

it must have been

the first

easy rhythm

with which I breathed

myself to sleep,

it must have been

the prayer I said

speaking to the otherness

of the night.

And

I thought

this is the good day

you could

meet your love,

this is the black day

someone close

to you could die.

This is the day

you realize

how easily the thread

is broken

between this world

and the next

and I found myself

sitting up

in the quiet pathway

of light,

the tawny

close grained cedar

burning round

me like fire

and all the angels of this housely

heaven ascending

through the first

roof of light

the sun has made.

This is the bright home

in which I live,

this is where

I ask

my friends

to come,

this is where I want

to love all the things

it has taken me so long

to learn to love.

This is the temple

of my adult aloneness

and I belong

to that aloneness

as I belong to my life.

There is no house

like the house of belonging.

Check out the Boss dancing with his moma... pure holy ground to me!