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To live with all our heart
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The door of happiness closes, another one opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one, which has been opened for us. Helen Keller
It is better to have a heart that makes love than a mind that makes sense. Robert Keck
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
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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.
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, and present. 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...
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.
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 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."
I left home very, very early this morning, still dark for a pre-dawn ferry to the airport. My guide, to the east, a mere elegant sliver of a moon. I miss my garden already. I'm working in Oklahoma, where I just took a walk to let my blood pressure recover from the Seattle football game, and stood, in awe, watching the sun, molten and shimmering, dissolve into the horizon.
It reminded me that throughout this week, I want to remember the dance troupe, and to find a time and a way, to simply dance.
NOTE to Sabbath Moment friends... look for changes to come.
Yes, Sabbath Moment will still arrive each and every Monday.
But it may look a little different in format and style.
Just so you know...
And as always, I will welcome your input.
And coming soon... Sabbath Moment eBooks...
Stay connected:
terry's schedule
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Poems and Prayers
Having chosen this foolishness I was a free being.
How could the world ever stop me, how could I betray myself,
if I was not afraid? Annie Dillard
God, let us be serious.
face to face.
heart to heart.
let us be fully present.
strongly present.
deeply serious.
the closest we may come
to innocence.
amen.
Michael Leunig
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Be Inspired
Living without Fear: The truth about intimacy --Terry Hershey (Anaheim Convention Center) --2013 Religious Education Congress.
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Notes from Terry
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Add Sabbath Moment to your organization's or church's newsletter. Contact our office at customerservice.tdh@gmail.com or 800-524-5370. Contact me personally at tdh@terryhershey.com Invite Terry to your organization or church --Terry Speaking. Copyright © 2011 Terry Hershey. All Rights Reserved. Please contact us for permission to reprint. Forward this Issue. Thanks for helping us grow!
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