The Dance

            Years ago when I was young and fresh in ministry, full of galloping hope and energy, I went to a continuing education conference in San Anselmo California at our PCUSA seminary there.  The title of the conference was “Companions on the Inner Way.” The Episcopal priest Morton Kelsey led it.  He was marvelous, as I recall, but since I had already read every word he ever wrote there were not a lot of surprises.  There was, however, the wonderful sweet recognition of remembered insights and there was the loveliness of his spirit that filled the room with a winsome light. 

            There was also the powerful presence of his wife.  In those days as a young woman in ministry, one of the few I knew, I relished every experience with a strong and self-assured older woman. I was anything but strong and self-assured then, although those who knew me at that time remember me differently. Memory is a wily thing.

            There was another speaker there as well.  I cannot remember his name or what exactly he was speaking about.  Did I go to a workshop of some sort?  Was he a worship leader? Was he a pastor?  I don’t recall, but he told two stories that have stayed with me for nearly thirty years. I beg his indulgence, whoever he is, if the details have gotten a little muddled over the years.  Still the power of their grace is as clear and pure in my mind today as that startling day I first heard them. I’ll tell you one now, the other in my next post.

            The speaker had, over the summer, attended the wedding of his cousin.  The bride and groom planned every aspect of their day together…the service, their guest lists, each canapé and colored ribbon.  It was to be a witness to their life, a well-planned partnerships filled with family, friends and laughter.  Everything went off without a hitch. The ‘I do’s got done.  The veil flipped like a cloud.  The bride blushed.  The congregation applauded.

            At the reception, he and a group of his friends from school sat at a table reminiscing about letter jackets and school papers and nights at the drive in.  A longhaired disc jockey played swoony tunes and raucous rumbas as well as some English Invasion 60’s rock.  People danced on the slick parquet dance floor.  He was having a fine time.

            Shortly, he noticed a man in a wheel chair whom he did not know.  He was in his fifties perhaps.  It was hard to tell.  Pain and immobility age a person.  The man in the chair wheeled himself to the dance floor alone, fine arm muscles pulled against his shirt.  For sometime he struggled to get his chair over the tall lip to the floor.  He backed up and tried to crash up.  He wheeled sideways and tried to sneak up. Finally, in a do or die moment, he crested the hurdle and wheeled himself to one side of the floor.  There, carefully out of the way, he moved his chair with the music.  Switching arms, one turning a wheel, the other lifted around an imagined waist, he danced.  Tune after tune, eyes closed, head lifted.

            One of the young women at my speaker’s table couldn’t take her eyes from him.  She began to have trouble following the conversation at the table.  “No thank you.  I’ve had plenty,” she responded to a question like, “What time did you get in last night?” The conversation went on around her.  When one of the young couples got up to dance, the woman leapt from her seat and went to the man dancing in the wheel chair.

            “May I have this dance?” she asked him, wondering how in the world to proceed.

            “It would be my honor,” he said, reaching for her hands.  And they danced together until the wee hours, swaying and dipping, even managing a twirl or two.  Just with his hands he led her all around the floor.  They were in sync.  They chatted a little, but not much, each intent on the music and the movement.

            At the conclusion of the last song of the evening, he took her hand and kissed it lightly.  “You have done me a great kindness,” he said to her.  “Until tonight I have not danced in 20 years.  I used to be a professional ballroom dancer.  My wife was my partner and vice versa.  There was an accident coming home from a competition.  My wife was killed and I was paralyzed. You have brought me joy and healing tonight.  Thank you.”

            “My pleasure,” the woman said as he turned his chair and headed for the door.  She went back to the table with her friends who were gathering up their things.

            “Did you know him?” one asked.

            “No, not really,” she said.  “He was just an exquisite dancer.”  The young men looked at her puzzled, they with their rippled muscles and their seamless hair. 

            “That was nice of you,” one said.  But she did not hear, did not notice.  She was dancing with her arms.

            When I heard that story, I felt a wash of Spirit over me, like warm grey seawater, like an envelope, like a cloud.  When I heard that story I felt a glow of Spirit and the great power of kindness to change life dawned on me.

            Around the first of the year, I was praying for our church and asking for guidance about where we should go and how we should set our goals and priorities for the year.  Secretly, of course, I was hoping that God would say, “Don’t worry about it.  Just keep doing what you are doing.  I’ve got you covered.” But that was not the reassuring answer that came to me.

            As I prayed I felt God say, “Genie, this is to be the year of kindness. I want my people to learn to be kind.” I’m thinking, well, we aren’t mean as snakes to begin with. Most of the time.  God said, simply, “Let the Spirit make you kind.” That was it. “Let the Spirit make you kind.”

            As I thought about that call to kindness, I thought of the woman and the wheelchair dancer.  Let the Spirit, wind, Breath, make you kind.  After all, what is kindness but making space for the other and giving complete attention? It is not possible to be kind on the fly.  Kindness doesn’t require much but it does require that we notice, that we are attentive, that we humanize the others in our world rather than adding to the sum total of dehumanizing, fragmented, isolation that there is already plenty of around us.

            The beauty of the story of the two dancers is not just that she noticed the man’s struggle and felt sorry for him.  A quick assist with the lip of the dance floor would have taken care of that.  The beauty is that these two people noticed each other and attended to each other. When she offered her hand he took it.  When she looked uncertain, he gave her a twirl. I suppose they never met again, but each, no doubt, carried the kindness with them into whatever life might be. 

            I wonder sometimes, as I stumble through my life, left footed both, how many dances of kindness have escaped me unnoticed, past like an ocean ripple, dissolved in the murky chaos of ordinariness.  But I don’t stay there long, in that melancholy over the shoulder glance of a place.  Rather I try once more to give attention to the dancing all around me, and the dancer waiting to be released in me still.

            By reading this post you have noticed my hampered dance.  You have seen me bang up against the lip and find my little corner of the floor.  You have extended your hand to mine.  You have done me a great kindness.  Thank you. I’d love to hear your story/dances, too.