These bones can dance!

I was mistaken yesterday when I said these old bones can't dance.  Oh yes they can!  Today as part of our morning lecture (which dealt with mind and body in contemplative listening) we did some body work through dyads, triads, and whole group experience.  And we ended with dancing - wonderful, amazing dancing.  I could only stand and dance for a moment, but I discovered that I can chair dance like nobody's business!  It was joyful - and very freeing.  I have missed the freedom of my daily hour at the Elks hydrotherapy pool back in Boise - the ability to walk and jog and move and dance without pain, if only for an hour!  The soothing quality of the very warm water gives me mobility that I don't have on land right now.  I can do those things I love to do without pain, and just savor the freedom of movement.  My joints ache for that warm water, and the freedom to dance.  I never would have thought of dancing in a chair - but it felt good, too.  Freeing...       I will do it again!

Afternoon brings small group work where we practice this new way of listening and responding - a way that is counterintuitive for many of us, including myself.  I watched and experienced how a small group of loving, compassionate spiritual people could create a space where even I could go right down to my bones without fear and embrace what God was bringing to me - explore how God was inviting me... When all was said and done,  I was awed by what I had experienced, and by what it means to be community.  To hold that space for one another where we can experience God - without having to defend, interpret, or script God - and just allow Love to work...that is where transformation happens.

Yes indeed, I live to tell that in the presence of that kind of Love, these achy old bones can not only dance, but in my heart they can run up the stairs to follow a small herd of deer that have been gently inviting me into the unknown since Monday night (you met them in an earlier post, and they have been walking around in my heart ever since).  At first I wasn't sure I wanted to follow them up those steps...but tonight in Chapel I decided to open my heart and go up one step, then another, then I paused...and then I ran up those steps as fast as I could run!  Its the fastest I've even run - ever!   And I knew the community held me as I raced into the unknown and into the arms of Love.

With awe and love - and one joyous happy dance,
Kim