Invited to Dance
On NPR’s This American Life, Ira Glass interviewed a young woman, a singer with a Riverdance troupe. She told how one day, the troupe collectively decided to purchase a batch of lottery tickets. The plan (buoyed by sheer conviction and blind faith) seemed simple enough. Such a large purchase would increase their odds of winning, and with the considerable prize money, they could share the proceeds.
After winning (a foreclosure in their minds), they had determined they would quit Riverdance, and use the money to do whatever it was they really wanted to do: go back to school, buy a house, seek a new vocation, etc. Behind each of their wishes, you could read the longing for a change at a new direction in their lives.
We all can relate to the mental merry-go-round, “Surely there is something better, around the corner.” “This can’t be all there is.”
On the evening the lottery winner(s) was to be announced, the troupe danced their “final” performance. The singer described how a kind of ecstasy swept up the entire troupe, as they danced and sang wholehearted and unabashed. In their hearts, all the performers knew this would be their winning night, the night they would be released from the repetitiousness of their lives. All of them knew as well, as they danced and sang, that they were giving, creating, living and celebrating their best performance ever. Afterward, the audience, understandably, went wild. Something truly amazing had taken place.
The drawing was held. Not one troupe ticket held the winning number. They did not win the lottery. To a person, they couldn’t believe that their intention—or confidence—had failed them.
And yet.
Look at what happened. Their performance provided a container—a liturgy or sacred space—for some awakening of that which lay dormant in their souls. In fact, the troupe, literally, transcended the dance itself. They were engaged. They were totally alive. They were present. And yes, they were blossoming.
And, as it turns out, they did receive what they wished for.
In other words, once the troupe gave up the need to force a great performance, they simply danced.
It reminds me of Henry Miller’s quote, “The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely. We live at the edge of the miraculous.” In other words, to make space for what is dormant in our soul. Do we give ourselves that permission?
I take to heart the words of Catherine of Siena,
“I won’t take no for an answer,
God began to say
to me
when He opened His arms each night
wanting us to
dance.”
If only we have eyes to see.
Or, perhaps, if only we are able to surrender expectations that, in the end, prevent us from seeing.
Such as anticipated lottery winnings, I suppose… with the promise that life can be found “if only” or “when.”
Or in my case, having succumbed to some unnamed fear that keeps me from living an “unabashed life.” (“What would they think?”)
So. In our fear, we live life restricted. And constrained. Believing ourselves—our internal well-being—to be at the mercy of the world around us. Capitulating to keeping score and a need for control.
In the low-budget feel-good comedy, Joe versus the Volcano, Joe (Tom Hanks character) is a raging hypochondriac, stuck in a lifeless, hopeless job. He’s told he has six months to live. This is part of his job-quitting speech, “It’s fear. I’ve been too chicken to live my life, so I sold it to you for three hundred dollars a week.”
Later at dinner with a woman, he asks a mariachi band to play a song that “would drive us insane, that would make our hearts swell and burst.” (I love that… it’s a sentence we all need to learn… I’m just saying…)
Meg Ryan is sailing Hanks to an obscure island where he is to be sacrificed into a volcano. She has consented because her reward is the yacht, owned by her rich daddy, his strings still very present in her life. She tells Hanks, “I feel ashamed because I had a price. He named it and now I know that about myself. I’m soul sick and you’re going to see that.
Later, they are on deck of the boat, looking at the stars and moon. Joe says, “Almost the whole world is asleep. Only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement.”
Here’s the sticky-wicket: If I live that way, it may be uncomfortable, and take me down a unfamiliar pathway.
Our knee-jerk, of course, is to figure it all out, some sort of checklist for “living fully alive and fully aware.”
Or, and here’s the deal: like the dance troupe learned, we recognize that freedom happens only when we let go.
There is a scene in the movie Shawshank Redemption, when Andy locks himself in the warden’s office, puts a record on the turntable and sets the prison intercom microphone near the speaker. The music pervades and suffuses the entire prison. Red, the narrator, says, “I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can’t be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.”
A necessary invitation and reminder for all of us this week. And I want to remember the dance troupe, and to find a time, and a way, to simply dance, even with the noise and craziness.
I’m writing this after a very full and invigorating weekend in Julian, CA at the Whispering Winds retreat center. Our retreat theme, “Fully Alive”. We told stories. We laughed and we cried. And we danced.
I’m on my way home now, and I’m a tired puppy, looking forward to a glass of red wine, and a good night’s sleep.
Quote for our week…
It’s all a matter of keeping my eyes open. Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will sense them. The least we can do is try to be there; so that creation need not play to an empty house. Annie Dillard
BULLETING BOARD
Today’s Photo Credit: “Terry, Good morning, I cannot thank you enough for your Daily Sabbath! The stories you share are the first thing I read every morning and exactly what my soul needs. My family finds solace in the mountains. Climbing, hiking, exploring and enjoying God’s beautiful creation. This picture was taken at Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies… there are no words for this kind of beauty. Thank you for your continued ministry!” Tina Wagner… Thank you Tina… Thank you to all, I love your photos… please, keep sending them… send to terryhershey.com
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Letters that do my heart good…
–Hi, Terry. I love the Sufi story. It is just what we need right now. Thank you. Don
–Saturday Greetings Terry. I am thinking how much your Sabbath Moment and your Daily SM are like a life preserver thrown out into the dark water, and how much encouragement and hope are in that thrown to us, and I thought I should send some songs for your own encouragement and edification with SM in mind as well, Sky Ann
–Hey, friend- I don’t pay as much attention to the “photos “ as I might, but the “Forest Mother “ really hits home for me. As a guy in his 80’s, I have been struggling a bit with the image of myself as a weathered depleted shell of who I have been. This, the image of that tree immediately became something of that image of myself. But, lo and behold, the Jenning’s interpretation of that depleted tree as one which had become depleted in giving life to others brought me to a whole other dimension! Thanks to them and to you for that illuminating scene! Bob
–Terry, I really needed this message today. It is so easy to feel helpless, and therefore anxious, with all that is happening around us today. Your words have had a calming effect and pointed me in the right direction again. St Francis’s prayer is one of my favorites, and I need to pray and live those words each day. Thank you! Lynn
