What Bowling Taught Me About Patience
Photo Credit: Angie McMonigal Photography
A couple of week’s ago, on a cold Chicago afternoon, after being cooped up for most of the week, my husband and I looked at each other and said, “Let’s go bowling.”
Now, nothing says wholesome family fun quite like putting on some smelly communal shoes and listening to drunk men swear at the football game, but after being cooped up in the house for more of the week, we were just a little bit desperate.
Matt and Jack have gone bowling together a few times, but this was the first time that Teddy had been bowling. After trying on three (three!) different pairs of shoes, convincing him that the bowling ball that looked like Darth Maul was too heavy for him (he’s just a tiny bit obsessed with Star Wars), and showing him how to put his almost-four-year-old fingers in the ball and roll it down the lane, he was ready to go.
“Self! Self!” he stubbornly said in true Teddy fashion.
He walked to the line holding the ball with both hands and I have never been more certain that a trip to the ER for a broken toe would be in our near future. (By the grace of God, he made it out of the bowling alley with all ten toes intact.)
For ten frames, Teddy grabbed his ball, stepped up to the line, and heaved the ball as hard as he could down the lane. Most of the time, he rolled the ball right into one of the bumpers and it would sloooooowwwly bounce its way down the lane. On each of his rolls, the ball moved so slowly, in fact, that I was pretty sure that it wouldn’t make it to the pins. And, more than a few times, Matt and I exchanged a look that said, “Which one of us is going to ask the surly desk attendant for help when the ball stops in the middle of the lane?” (Fortunately, we never had to answer that question, but for the record, it would have been him.)
On every one of Teddy’s turns the ball moved at a snail’s pace, barely moving down the lane until, finally, it would make it to the pins and maybe even hit down a few. As one of THE most impatient people on the planet, I found the delay to be a bit unsettling at first. Waiting for the ball to plod down the lane, I felt nervous, jittery, and antsy.
But, after a few frames, I realized that what I was feeling wasn’t actually impatience; it was fear. Fear that the ball would never make it, fear that we’d have to ask for help from the surly man at the front desk, fear that Teddy would end up in a tantrumy heap of tears.
But, after a few frames, I realized that the ball would eventually make it to the pins even though it looked like it might stop moving at any moment. And with the fear of not making it subsiding, the waiting actually became the best part of it all. Because in the waiting, I had time to soak it all in. I could watch Teddy’s eyes light up as the ball moved down the lane, I could steal a few glances at my husband, and I watch my older son add up the scores on the screen.
Once the fear of never became the confidence of eventually, I was able to look at the waiting and the slowness in a whole new light.
And I wondered: How many other times have I mistaken fear for impatience? Fear of the never or the always. Fear of the falling and failing. Fear of dead ends and asking for help. Fear that without the end, the means just don’t matter.
And in this fast-paced, frenzy to get something or do something or hit the target, how much has gone unnoticed and how much enjoyment have I missed in the slow-moving journey?
I’ve been struggling a lot with impatience lately, wanting things to happen now, now, now. But I am realizing that this need for things to happen on my timetable is less about fulfillment and satisfaction, and far more about fear. Fear of losing control, fear that I will never make it, fear that I am somehow lacking just as I am and right where I am, fear that I won’t be satisfied until the pins are knocked down so to speak.
We tell ourselves that when the pins are knocked down, then we’ll be happy. When we get married, when we have a baby, when the kids are in school, when the kids are out of the house, when we get the job, when we get the promotion, when we are out of debt, when we buy a house, when we get an agent, when we get published, when we receive this award, when we land that sales account, when…, when…, when…then we’ll be happy. And all the while, the ball is moving slooooowwwwly down the lane and there is so much going on while it rolls if only we’d just notice.
The ball moves slowly, more slowly than we’d like, many times. And we wait and we wait and we wait, growing increasingly tired of all the waiting and more fearful that the ball might actually stop. And in all of that fear, we miss it. We miss the twinkly eyes and the emotions, the bouncing back and forth and the graceful movement to it all, the sights and sounds and people and various goings-on that are actually a really big deal if we’d just stop focusing so much on those damn pins at the end of our lane and trust that the ball will eventually get there.
After bowling for a few hours last Sunday afternoon, and watching the ball move slowly down the lane, I realized a few things. I realized that the ball will slowly, eventually, finally reach the pins; it just takes a little longer sometimes. I realized that if the ball does stop, you can always ask for help (even if you have to ask the surly man behind the desk), get a new ball, and roll again. And, most importantly, I realized that there is so much good stuff going on while we wait for whatever it is that we’re waiting for.
So take your time. Pay attention. Enjoy the journey.
And know that, even when the ball moves slower than we ever thought possible, that at least the pins are happy for few extra moments of peace.
This post originally appeared on the author’s website at www.christineorgan.com.
His Day Is Done
Since hearing the news last Thursday of the passing of Nelson Mandela, our beloved Madiba, I have been longing to be able to share the experience with my friends in South Africa. Although we all knew the time would come when he would no longer be physically with us, it has been hard to absorb. He had been through so much, accomplished the seemingly impossible.
But his time has come, as it must to all of us. On Sunday he will be laid to rest with the ancestors. We are left to remember, to cry, to celebrate, to sing and to dance, to carry on his work. Watching the SABC-TV live streaming of the memorial service all day on Tuesday, I was reminded about the meaning of his life for ours. As I reflected on all the news pieces flooding in on the radio, TV and Internet, I feel a sense of gratitude for this life, and yes, a sense of sadness. The words of Maya Angelou in her tribute poem … His Day is Done, written after Mandela’s passing, says it all… The final verse reads: :
…
Nelson Mandela’s day is done.
We confess it in tearful voices
Yet we lift our own to say
Thank You.
Thank You, Our Gideon.
Thank You, Our David.
Our great courageous man
We will not forget you
We will not dishonor you
We will remember and be glad
That you lived among us
That you taught us
And
That you loved us
All!
Mandela has given the world so much; now it our turn to receive these gifts and to pass them on. Our beloved Madiba showed us the way forward when he asked that his birthday be honoured by each of us giving at least 67 minutes of service to our communities, our countries, our world in recognition of the 67 years he had devoted to the struggle for freedom and democracy in South Africa.
He gave… we received the blessing… and now that he has joined the ancestors, it is our turn to give, to pass on the blessing … to make the world a better place for all.
How will you honour Madiba’s life today? To whom and what will you give?
A Prayer for the Day After Thanksgiving
May we remember that thanks-giving isn’t a day or a celebration. May we remember that the act of giving thanks is a daily commitment, an intentional act of love, a spiritual practice of sorts, and an understanding that we are all a little broken, that we are all desperately in need of grace. The act of giving thanks is gritty and clumsy, awkward and vulnerable, constant and filled with kind truth.
May we remember that gratitude is a peaceful appreciation for the absolute privilege of life, with its inherent flaws, messiness, and organized chaos. May we remember that gratitude isn’t just obligatory thank-you’s for gifts and favors or bold professions of our blessings. Gratitude is a deeply felt inner truth, a delicate art form to be practiced, and refined over the course of a lifetime.
As we move further into the holiday season, may we remember that it is a season of gratitude, abundantly full of the connective fibers of life and the very essence of what it means to be alive.
Raking Leaves
People regularly say to me that they wouldn’t want to live in California, because they would miss the seasons. As a California native who has lived in a variety of other places, I understand this. Who would want to miss the seasons of Oh My God it is Really Snowing in April, or It’s So Hot and Humid I Literally Feel as if I Am Melting? But the fact that we give those lovely seasons a miss doesn’t mean that we are without seasons here by the San Francisco Bay. At the moment, for instance, it is the season of Raking Leaves.
True, the weather is dry and sunny, and we’re expecting a high of 70 degrees, but the leaves are turning yellow and drifting into heaps along the driveway. Paradise makes fewer demands on a person than harsher climes, but there are still things that need to be done. Raking leaves is one of them.
There are worse jobs. Dry leaves aren’t heavy, and the scritch, scritch sound of the rake forms its own kind of meditative chant. There are many good ways to rake leaves: setting them as mulch around your garden or piling them in the green waste bin or creating great mountains for kids or dogs to play in. You can use a wide broom if you’re of a very tidy persuasion. Just please, please, never a leaf blower. You can’t think over the sound of a leaf blower. Heck, your neighbors can’t think over the sound of your leaf blower.
And thinking is what raking leaves is for. Raking Leaves is the season to remember that even in paradise, things die, that we and everyone we love will all drift to the ground at last. That each of our lives is merely one little leaf, different but nearly indistinguishable from every other little leaf. That we belong to a tree that will remain standing long after we are gone, whose branches are visible even in the height of summer, if we would care to look, but are so much clearer in this time of stripping down. Raking leaves, one might even consider that the only way to truly connect with the deep roots of that great tree would be to fall, and become soil, and so become nourishment for the larger whole.
Raking leaves, smelling the faint, sharp odor of decay that has already begun, one might long for the rain to finally come and nourish the thirsty ground, turning the hills green once again. Or one might wish for the bright days to never end, to live always in this comfort and beauty. Either way, if you spend long enough raking leaves you will be forced to admit that you have no control, that the rain will come or not come precisely on its own schedule, without your longings having the slightest effect. That the world will give you leaves or grass or flowers or dry earth exactly as it will, and that all you can do is to show up, rake or trowel or hose in hand, and do your best to be grateful for what you are given, and to honor the giver.
Reflections on death from the garden
The echinacea, once vibrant pink, is now black.
- A friend told me that the word for aster in Hungarian means, literally, end of summer.
This time of year, as we approach Halloween, The Day of the Dead, and All Saints’ Day, I am often thinking of death. Granted, I am always a little bit morbid—my astrologer sister would say it’s because I’m a Scorpio. (I regret that I was too old to go Goth in my teen years, because I suspect I might have enjoyed that.) But right now, death is often lurking just under my mind’s surface.
My garden is one of the sources of my thoughts, and it is a place where there is plenty of room for such thoughts. This lovely, non-judgmental community of green friends, lets me think about whatever I fancy. And the garden is full of death. Every day I am pulling up or lopping off plants that have given their all—the perennials having given it for this year and likely to return, the annuals having lived their whole life in this one year. Farewell, I say to the enormous squash plant, as I pull it up and hold it by its roots. Farewell, I remember when you were just a seed!
The longer I garden, the more comfort I take in the ritual of going through the entire life cycle each year. I adore picking out seeds in the fall to plant in the spring. My grow light table in the basement has gotten bigger and bigger because having those tiny green babies means so much in March and early April, when the winter here in Minnesota has just gotten so long that I may go berserk if some tiny waft of a spring breeze doesn’t blow through, some tiny green weed doesn’t poke up under the snow. Tucking those seedlings into the May earth has all of the drama of sending my kid off to kindergarten, tucking tiny invisible notes into their invisible lunch boxes as I plant them. And then cheering for them in summer’s fullness as they grow up and begin to live out their life’s purpose—as zinnias’ shiny red petals glow in the sunlight, as basil or cilantro graces my table. And then, Minnesota fall means that all growing, all producing of food or flower, will cease for another long winter.
The more years I participate in this cycle, the more I love the dramatic resurrection stories so many of my plants tell me. Some are, simply, perennials, and I know as I cut them to the ground that they’ll bounce back in the spring, shiny green and new again. Others are busy throwing their seeds around the yard, winking at me and saying I’ll be impressed by their progeny. Other annuals are simply done, with no tales of regret to whisper in my ear as I say good-bye to them. All are amazing role models in giving it all away, in surrender, in generosity.
Some people believe that we’re perennials, that after our deaths, our souls reside eternally in one place or another. Some say we’ll be back, though perhaps in a different form. Whatever is and will be, I live my life as if I’m an annual—acting as if, if some part of me is to survive, it will be in the growth of the seeds I have sown in my lifetime.
With the help of wind, and birds, the exact location of the seeds which grow is unpredictable. Similarly, I don’t know which of the seeds I’ve sown will continue to bear their own seeds and keep growing after I’m gone. Given what I’ve seen in my life so far, my only prediction is that what of me keeps growing after I’m dead will be nothing I would ever predict.
My own mother, dead eleven years, increasingly comes back in memories that make me giggle. She wasn’t excessively funny when she was alive, but the memories of her humor are the ones that keep whispering in my ear now. Silly things she said forty years ago at dinner make me laugh out loud. This time of year she has more to say, I notice, as do other beloved ghosts. The pagans say that this is the time of year when the veil is thinnest between life and death, and in the garden, I feel that thinning all around me.
I don’t believe in a heaven in the sky, where St. Peter welcomes some and turns others away. But this time of year, in my garden, as the crows shout, squirrels scurry around, and geese fly over and honk their farewells, in the sweet grief of letting go and saying goodbye, I touch a tiny bit of heaven on earth.
Signs of New Life
Oh yes, I know that spring is finally coming to the Prairie! I can see it in the daylight sun, even if it’s not yet reflected back through leaves or color here in Minnesota.
Mostly, I can see it in the trash in my yard, which has emerged yet again from another winter leaving me in wonder.
I live on a corner, so it’s not inconceivable that people come by and drop stuff my way, but every year I am dumbfounded by the sheer variety and quantity.
This year, besides my own yard signs which froze into the ground (in violation of MN law, which would have you remove them directly after elections so you don’t tick off your neighbors through a long miserable winter), I have an endless variety of random items. I’m not talking about candy wrappers or colorful bags of other people’s dog crap—yawn. Or the unbagged piles of other people’s dog’s crap either. No, I’m talking about things that really make you wonder.
A Barbie doll’s head, for instance, one year. Did some angry kid rip that off of their sibling’s beloved doll and heave it through a passing car window, leaving only a tiny hole in the snow where it fell, making it impossible for the family to find even if they came back and tried? Wouldn’t Barbie’s long blond hair have stuck up defiantly out of the snow as a flag—here I am!? Perhaps it was an angry mother at wit’s end on a horrific February day: “What, you forgot your mittens AGAIN? I’m taking down Barbie!”
Or a tennis shoe, looking like it belonged to an adolescent male. Again, I’m left with nothing but my speculations: was my house the location for a fight between kids as they walked home? Was this revenge? Did a mean bully throw the beloved shoe of some sweet innocent kid? Or did some kid hate these shoes so much that he (I’m presuming gender here) wanted to be able to get home and say he’d lost a shoe and needed new ones? There is no phone wire over my house that someone was trying to throw it onto. So I’m bewildered.
I love imagining stories that account for weird trash items. Since I don’t know a thing, the story is all I have, and wondering about them gives me something to do as I clean the yard. I’ve found items less intriguing—a wallet, with no cash or credit cards, but library card and other things with a name on them, which I turned into the police station. Used condoms—WHAT!?!? My YARD!?!?!? On a CORNER!??!
This year, from the looks of it, the trash is mostly mundane—my own plastic pots from seedlings, that must have blown around after I stacked them neatly in the corner; gum wrappers and cigarette butts from passer-by. (Last year, a healthy cannabis plant that emerged in garden told me that someone had thrown another kind of butt into my yard!)
Here’s the thing: I’m so excited for spring, for access to my yard and garden again, that even the trash is a welcome site. Today’s task is to pick it up and get rid of it, but not in a spirit of anger or resentment. More like, “Hey! It must be spring!”
Yesterday, in a heart meditation session, I saw that my long-neglected practice had resulted in my heart looking similar to my yard: Though I could see healthy green growth and even some flowers when I looked closely in there, I could also see brambles of dead thorny branches which needed to be cut away before I could access the growth without hurting myself. For once, I was kind. For once, I put on heavy gloves in my mind’s eye before reaching in to remove those thorns. For once, I could see that the thorns were just an easily removable obstacle, and that the growth, the health, the vitality was right there beckoning to me. Clearing away the brambles I visualized in my mind’s eye became a blessing, a labyrinth leading me to the clearing.
When it’s been a long hard winter, even the trash, even the brambles, in our real and metaphoric gardens can be seen as a gift. The clearing away can be done with joy and gratitude, eagerness and optimism, when we know that spring is coming.
When we’ve been away from spiritual practice, even clearing away the rubble to get us back there can become a joy. May our spiritual practices allow us to see even ‘yard pick up day’ as a blessing, greeted with gratitude after a long cold winter. With longing for new life in our eye, may all manner of things become beautiful!
Beauty Today
Tomorrow is the first day of Spring in the Northern Hemisphere. Here in Central Pennsylvania, yesterday felt bitterly cold and we had several inches of snow. Yesterday was winter, and the weather forecasters say that it may be wintery again tonight with cold temperatures and more snow. But today the sun is out, the snow is melting, and the crocus blooms in the snow. The air feels like Spring and the bird songs sounded cheery and hopeful. Tomorrow is Spring and today is beautiful.
I have asked several small groups in my congregation to recall their own spiritual experiences and then to look for the values in those experiences. For each group one of those values is awe and reverence for nature and for beauty. One man mentioned awareness of the fragility of life. Beauty is today.
Much of the beauty that we respond to and love is fragile and fleeting. The snow melts. The crocus blooms and dies. The way light and shadow fall across the landscape is constantly changing. Music dies away. We could lament fragility and the fleeting nature of beauty. We can and do ignore beauty as our monkey minds fret about the past or the future. Or we can stop ourselves and live that value of reverence for nature and for beauty. We can savor the beauty that we find, the beauty that we see, hear, feel. We can be alive to delight and to gratitude.
My sister, Ginny, gave a sermon in her Unitarian Universalist congregation (http://www.unitarianchurchofmontpelier.org/index.php/resources/ucm-sermon-podcast). “Is Happiness Escapist or a Valuable Spiritual Practice?” Ginny’s answer is, “Yes.” Ginny talks about one of her own favorite happiness practices, savoring. To savor is more than to appreciate. It is to attend and to delight. It is to be alive. As Rumi says, “Let the beauty that we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”
May you see and savor beauty today.
Grateful, even so
The universe, she is laughing at me.
This is my third attempt to write a blog about gratitude.
The first two times got eaten my by computer. I saved them wrong. I know, you think, what are the odds? That’s why I think the universe is having a good laugh.
The first time, I sat in a meditative space and wrote the blog with deep joy. Writing it took me someplace I hadn’t intended to go, and by the time I was through, I had my plan in place for this week of Thanksgiving, as overloaded with tasks as it is: Just focus on being grateful. Don’t worry about anything else. Stuff will get done or it won’t, but my only job is to be grateful.
The second time, writing the blog was a little less inspiring to me, but it was better written. You would have like it. I talked about all of the things I have learned about moving from a place of joy, from a place of gratitude. I said that I don’t believe that stress, or just doing things to do them, is truly necessary for getting things done.
And now here I am grinding this third attempt out, because it is due today and if I don’t write it I will have blown my deadline. Doing just what draft 2 said I didn’t need to do! Draft 2 did acknowledge that yes, there are times, when deadlines or urgency compel us to move from a place of necessity. But even then, said my draft 2 calmer and wiser self, we can be grateful.
So here’s the challenge of the third draft: Can I be grateful even when I am frustrated by my own ineptitude, frustrated by needless and stupid mistakes? And here’s what I see: Yep, even then. I’m still grateful for the chance to speak here, for the opportunity to express myself, for the knowledge that people will take a moment to read what I have written, despite my obvious imperfection. But I also see that gratitude is not always a slow, ponderous, let’s take a moment and breathe deep and be grateful, kind of process. This time other deadlines—places to be, people to feed, other tasks to get done, nip at my heels and call me to move quickly. This time I am grateful on the fly!
So, in this Thanksgiving week that has taken me by surprise, arriving sooner than I expected, and without my readiness, this is indeed my intention: to stay in gratitude, even when I’m not in a state of deep cosmic focus. To let gratitude be there with my to do list that seems to grow instead of shrinking, with all of life’s distractions, with my frustrations, my mistakes, my obligations, my unmet deadlines, with people who annoy me, traffic jams, relatives with different ideas about the perfect Thanksgiving meal, a computer that eats documents when a not-too-bright person is at the helm.
I’ll let gratitude be the spice that makes the soup delicious, even if the main ingredients are beans and rice. I’ll let gratitude be the bow on the package, even if the package is wrapped in old newspaper. I’ll let gratitude be the cherry on top, even if it is on top of a plate of leftovers. I’ll trust that gratitude is there, holding together all that feels like it is falling apart.
And so, during this hectic week, I invite you to be there, in all of the chaos, however you do or don’t celebrate on Thursday, whether you are angry and lonely or mellow and blissful, to remember that gratitude is always there for us to rest in. We can breathe it, sleep in it, eat it with the turkey or tofurkey.
Whatever you do, or don’t do, this week, may gratitude whisper in your ear, arise from your heart, and flow out from all that you do and who you are. Even, or especially, when you screw up, when you feel you’ve got too little too late, when you want to throw a little tiny tantrum. Especially then.
(And please, Gods and Goddesses, may I save this document correctly!)
How to Vote as an Act of Prayer
We’d love to cast a vote for compassion, freedom, justice. But they’re not on the ballot. So we can’t let the ballot reflect the extent we allow ourselves to envision the world we want to create. Hold that bigger vision in prayer or meditation before turning to the act of voting: a land where justice shall roll down like waters, and peace like an everflowing stream. A land where we bind up the broken and the captives go free. That’s the ballot our hearts and souls can cast, every day and with every activity.
But meanwhile, it’s time to vote! So the following are my ideas about how to turn that activity into a form of prayer.
Before your vote, do thorough research about all of the positions, even the tiniest. You may not love this research, but find organizations or friends who do love to do it and read what they wrote. Print up a sample ballot, mark it up, and stick it in your pocket. Clarify your mind. Scrambling around trying to sort through obscure races in the voting booth will take you right out of praying mode and into guilt and panic!
Walk into the polling place with gratitude that it is there. As the election judges check your name off the list, offer a moment of gratitude for them and their service. Offer a moment of gratitude for all of the check marks on that list, for all of the people in your neighborhood who take time to affirm their freedom and power to vote.
As you walk into the voting booth and set up your ballot, offer gratitude for all who have worked for your right to do so: founding fathers and suffragists, freedom riders and voting rights activists.
Now take out the ballot. Offer gratitude for all who would offer their time and their families and their lives for public service, whether you agree with any of their positions or not.
Look at the names on the ballot of the candidates you will vote for. As you check a candidate’s name, visualize that person’s strongest, most powerful, courageous and bold self. Vote for that candidate affirming the possibility of who they might become in office with strong community support and accountability.
As you check names, visualize yourself at your strongest, most powerful, courageous and bold self. Offer up gratitude for all of the civic leaders and organizations that will help you to be such a person. Commit to being a citizen activist. Cast an invisible vote for yourself beside each candidate’s name.
If you vote on community initiatives, take time to visualize all of the activists who worked to support freedom and justice about this initiative. As you check a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ box, imagine all of those affected by the initiative who vote with you. Especially imagine those who cannot vote, because they’re school kids, or their immigration status doesn’t yet allow them to vote, or because they served time for a crime, or for any other reason. Imagine your beloved ones who have died and won’t be casting a vote. Put them all into your pen and let them help you put in that check mark.
After you’re done voting, and despite the lines waiting, allow yourself a moment just to touch the ballot, to offer up a blessing for democracy itself, for fair elections, for the concept of one person one vote, for the lofty view of humanity which initially envisioned such a system, and which has expanded the notion of ‘personhood’ over the last several centuries.
Leaving the booth, smile at those around you, walk to the machine and insert your ballot, offering one last invisible bow of gratitude as you leave.
Fireworks
Truth be told, I don’t feel like writing a blog this morning. I just feel like watching Katy Perry and an 11 year old autistic girl named Jodi DiPiazza perform Perry’s song, “Fireworks,” over and over. Having watched it about eight times now—and forced everyone who has been near my Iphone or computer to do the same these past couple of days—I still get weepy each time and feel as if I’ve seen a glimpse of The Holy. (And yes, thanks for asking, I did donate money, too.)
The people I’ve forced to watch it include my own Very Sophisticated Sixteen-Year-Old, who, when instructed, “Come and watch this and cry with me!” sneered when I put it on: “Katy Perry? Seriously, you think Katy Perry could make me cry?” –having listened to Katy Perry Years Ago and all!—but then pleaded ‘something in my eye’ midway through the video. I was glad, because I had posted the link on my facebook page with the words, “Call 911 if this doesn’t make you cry. Your heart is not beating anymore.” Whew. #Notatotalfailureasamother.
I love knowing that all over the country, people of every political persuasion are weeping to this video. I think watching it helps us to remember why we’re on the planet, and who we are as a people, and that it’s not about dueling ideologies. It’s about helping each other ‘ignite the light and let it shine’—helping each other to flourish, to shine brightly as fireworks, no matter who we are.
“Do you ever feel like a plastic bag, drifting through the wind?” Jodi sings to us, and those of us who did not learn the lyrics Years Ago are knocked over by the message and the messenger and how completely they merge. The crowd roars delight, and we see this amazing, brave, child receive the cheers completely in her body and take a deeper breath from the transmission.
“Boom, Boom, Boom, Even brighter than the moon, moon, moon” we watch Katy singing to Jodi, describing the beauty right before her eyes, love pouring off of her whole body right into that child, overflowing, and pouring into us as well.
And, how much do we need that message ourselves right now? Dealing with her autism, Jodi and her family have clearly overcome obstacles most of us can only imagine. But which of us hasn’t felt “like a house of cards, one blow from caving in?”
How much does this country need to believe, as we wade through the rubble of what’s left of our common life together, “If you only knew what the future holds/ after a hurricane comes a rainbow”?
This song’s power has been making me think that we’ve got the communications thing all screwed up. It is with humility as a preacher/ writer that I say music is exponentially more powerful than words. No spoken message could have millions of us watching this video over and over, drinking in its energy as if we have been wandering in the desert for too long and stumbled onto an oasis.
Just thinking: Maybe instead of, or in addition to, political ‘debates,’ which are increasingly less about policy and more about posturing anyway, we should have “sing offs” before the elections. Let artists and musicians sing out their dreams of who we could be, and let the people decide which candidate is more likely to take us there.
But for now, we have Katy and Jodi to help us remember. And I’m grateful for that! (Want to watch with me now?)