Dancing dad
I stood at the end of the aisle in the grocery store today, trying to think whether I needed to steer my cart down its length for some item or another. The aisle was empty except for a young dad and his kid, who was maybe two, sitting in dad’s grocery cart. Kroger was piping in that music played to make us middle-aged shoppers feel young again, and dad was dancing, right there in the aisle, to the utter delight of kid. I watched for a few seconds, grinning, but not long enough for dad to turn and see. This scene was the happiest thing I saw all day.
ehj2 wrote:
especially when i have been in the woods for awhile, and feel connected to everything, there is an unbounded exhuberance within me. as i get older i work at cutting away what i am not, of dropping the parts i refuse to carry. i am working on finding a clear true expression of this huge clear something within me that does not sound egotistical. but it walks like a giant and hears music between the stars. there is a part of me which watches me and is sometimes delighted with me. it is wonderful to be in the world at this moment with my task.
i remember as a child i knew all this. i danced or ran or played or drank in the world all the time. i watched adults and knew somewhere somehow something could go wrong. i promised myself i would never take that path which made me dried and stilted and crippled.
there is a professional personna that demands stilting. but i try to wear it only as a cloak that i wear lightly and discard easily, not my natural skin that never comes off.
i dance in the halls at work, and talk about angels in the corridors and sitting with us at meetings, and a better world groaning to be. i claim my eccentricity early.
i try everyday to keep my promise i made as a child. to never stop seeing the lights and living with them.
i don’t really think there is much that is more important than this which we can do for our children and the people around us. to demonstrate that the trouble of life is worth it, to express that joy openly and honestly and clearly. why would anyone want to become an adult if it really meant having to give up everything?
i think we were born to dance. i think that is how the music flows through us and enters the world. that is how spirit expresses its loving relationship to matter, to the creation. that is how the sun touches the moon.
that is how the God within us is incarnate.
/e
Posted on 15-Oct-05 at 8:13 am | Permalink