"...leaping and dancing before the Lord." : Tuesday prayer for 7/14/15

Inspired by 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19 and other things

From http://www.dancingphysicist.com/venn-diagram-of-my-life/

Dear God:

I used to dance.

I remember a time when I was 14.  I was at some sort of dance and everyone else was around the same age - a beautiful gathering of the awkward. We all started bouncing. We all jumped up and down in the closest we could get to unison. We were all smiling and laughing and sweating and impressed with ourselves for doing something wonderful. We smilingly speculated if the floor might collapse (under the weight of all that joy). We were charismatics.

When I was in college, it was not unusual that I was the first person out on the dance floor. It was the late 80’s so I wore a lot of black and the music seemed angsty but was really delicious for those of us who were so relieved that someone had figured out how to put our own angstiness to a beat. As was the time, my feet would move out of the beat and my body would move with it. It was a dance resiting dance and I loved it and could do it and it felt honest. It was mystical and secret.

Then, I forgot how to dance.

I don’t know what happened. I can’t name one particular moment or another when I stopped.  It was like I was injured or something. My head became too heavy for my body to carry and I felt pressed firmly into my seat; my feet melted into the floor and became the same as it. I look at dancers now and can feel what they are doing but can’t do it. Once in awhile, a dance will emerge but then it’s noticed and I notice and then it ends.

Yesterday, I came home from work and music was playing. Our two and half year old yelled out, “Daddy! Daddy! Come dance around the table!” and I walked up the stairs in to our apartment to find my two beloveds running/marching/dancing around our dinner table. I did not think. I did not think. I was pulled into the whirlpool and we all laughed and smiled and sweated in the summer heat.  There were berries on that table; a water bottle; a random fork.  We could have lit the candles.

A prayer would be sung later before a meal of summer corn; chard from the garden Lauren tends; meatballs; and cold, white wine.

Food would fall on the floor;

Water would be poured on the table;

Small hands would smack the spilled water with divine exuberance.

The water splashed on my face and I remembered.

Amen.