Thursday, August 23, 2012

Dancing Over the Pain


FLASHBACK:  I keep replaying in my mind a really moving interaction I had with a dancer on our EVE strip club outreach a few Fridays ago.   Ya know...those moments when time halts and the minutes reel in their seconds to stand at attention in a hurried hush to see what will happen next?  It played out like this.

This dancer had spent months, or had it been years, surveying these odd creatures from across camp.  These women that return to the valley monthly with the simple message that she is valued.  That band of renegade nonconformists building welcoming campfires for the wondering eye.  She used to stand at a good measured distance.  Couldn't risk being burned again, but now she's begun to see their flame as a source of warmth and has been inching toward its light.  Her back stiff and always keeping prudent watch for intruders, guarding the padlock she has placed on her soul that only pretends to securely hold back her mangled past.  This would be the night she would entrust her house of horror to strangers.  The night she should would risk it all for love once more.

The relationship intentionally slow going; a crawling pace set to the rhythm of the low groan of creation calling out for that final hour of redemption.  There's a whisper in that tempo that woos you in.  It softly says, "follow me to freedom."  If moving too fast, it cannot be heard.  And those special ones on the fringes, they know what to look for in sojourners that have reached the other side.  They are on to the fast and furious lie of this society.

I was unwittingly perched there on the precipice of a miracle.  Standing at the edge of the gaping hole the ancient scriptures refer to as the gap, building the mystery with others suspended in this parenthesis of time.

Then she made her move.  From behind me, I feel arms wrap round, squeezing softly.  It was a calculated move.  In a language not bound by written symbol, a silent voice within those outstretched arms communicates this, "Oh no you don't!  I'm leading the giving this time." I reciprocate and my hands go up to greet her victory.  She hugs and we begin to twist back and forth; me cocooned tightly in the risky embrace of vulnerability she has taken. It is totally natural, totally right, totally glorifying.

We stand there embracing like two school girls having weathered the lunch room wars and the dodging of rocks from flirtatious boys on the playground.

Mischievous friends reuniting after a long and lonely journey through time, now standing in solidarity outside of it somehow.  Our souls exchanging messages of amazement that we have just had an encounter with Love.






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