Dance of Life

Bill:
May I have this dance with you?
No matter what shape our bodies, we are all dancers.
Through the good times and the bad times, too, let it be a dance.

Barb:
Rabbi Hillel, the author of the words that called us to worship this morning,
was a great teacher in the first century Before the Common Era.
His liberal views of Jewish law shaped the tradition.

Now I’m not exactly sure about this, but I’m guessing that Hillel
had made a pledge to himself and to his God to hold before himself always
his highest ideals and his love for his people.

I believe the legend goes that he was stuck in traffic,
or running what he thought would be a ten minute errand,
or, I don’t know, was he in the waiting room at Kaiser,
or reading an email of misinformation sent to a slew of people?
Anyway, something sort of small was happening that got to him big.
Know what I mean?

And the great Rabbi blew it.

If this were true, I’m guessing the first words the Rabbi spoke
were ones he wouldn’t want remembered, let alone written down.

Later as he reflected on his good intention, his good first steps,
and then his falling short,
the first three lines of our reading must have come to him.
“I get up. I walk. I fall down.”

Though it’s not recorded this way, if the Rabbi was like you and me,
those first three lines were repeated again and again in his life.

There’s always another errand that ought to be quick,
a task or conversation that should take just a minute,
or some sort of “in the thick of it” moment
when ideals and love slip from the center stage of our consciousness.

For me, there are those times when I say and do things I wish I hadn’t.
I lose sight of my intention. I make mistakes.
“I get up. I walk. I fall down.”
Bill:
There are those small things that get to us in a big way.
And then there are those big things.
Sometimes we get literally knocked flat.
We do take a fall, receive a diagnosis, lose a loved one.
Sometimes we get treated disgracefully, inhumanely.
Family, friends, lovers betray us or abandon us,
or are so consumed with themselves that they can’t support us
when we are most hurting, most vulnerable.
The road is steep and rugged.

Sometimes the messages the world perpetuates
tell us we are not worthy because of who we love
or how we look or where we are from…
And it’s like the stuffing gets knocked out of us.
The spirit, the life in us, gets knocked flat.

And somehow we have to pick ourselves up.

How do you get up and take more steps,
keep before you your highest ideals and your love of people
when you feel pushed, shoved down?

Somehow again and again, we pick ourselves up or we receive another’s hand.
If I stumble, will you help me?

Like my friend Marlin, whose three year old daughter recently died,
hope begins, in the midst of deep loss,
when others reach out to us.
Like birds who have lost feathers,
we seek equilibrium and re-learn to fly with what remains.
Eventually, we know love is still possible, and we begin to heal.

This dance of life is no solo performance. We aren’t dancing alone.

When it comes to spiritual practice, we remind one another.
We come together on Sundays
to keep before ourselves our highest ideals and our love for people.

Staying clear and centered in our deepest intention is a dance.

We get up. We take some steps. We fall down. We get up. We take some steps.
Practice is it. The practice is the dance.
There’s no big performance we’re gearing up for-only our lives.
This is it. This is the dance.

Barb:
In this dance of life, what’s a mantra I can repeat
to keep before me my ideals and my love for people?

At the Ministry Days, before our Unitarian Universalist General Assembly,
last month in St. Louis, I heard Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg.

She told her colleague Robert Thurman’s story.

Imagine you’re in a subway. Martians come and zap the car,
and you’re going to be together forever with these people.

If they’re hungry, you’re going to feed them.
If they’re freaking out, you’re going to calm them.
You do it because you’re going to be together forever.

Thurman imagines this scenario to make the point
that we all are interdependent.
How we are, what we do ripples out.

Nothing happens over there anymore.
War is outdated. At one time in human history,
to destroy our neighbor was a triumph for ourselves.
Now we see what happens there, happens here.

Sharon Salzberg said that on her flight,
she had a three and a half hour delay on the tarmac.
The plane was hot, people were screaming, and she was annoyed.
The pilot came on the speaker, “No one is getting off this plane.”

Sharon Salzberg has repeated Robert Thurman’s story many times.
Now the abstraction of Thurman’s story was real.
“Maybe these are my people, maybe we’re here forever.”

Remembering this helped.
How she would be, what she would do would ripple out.

I packed the mantra “these are my people” in the little book bag of my mind
to carry with me during General Assembly.
General Assembly overwhelms me.
There are thousands of Unitarian Universalists together
in the relative small space of a convention center and the nearby hotels.
But these are my people.

When I would remember that, I could overcome my shyness,
be outgoing, interested, playful.
Waiting in lines with people, I struck up conversations,
got suggestions for things to see and do or read that I rejoiced in.

On hotel elevators, I got more relaxed with greeting strangers,
and some of them, imagine that, were not in St. Louis for General Assembly.
I enjoyed moments of good connection.
“These are my people.”

I tried to carry that with me as Bill and I left General Assembly
and went on a journey, slowly making our way home.

We celebrated Canada Day in Victoria with 35,000 Canadians,
dressed in red and white with maple leaves tattooed temporarily on cheeks.
Tears came to my eyes as we all stood and sang O Canada.
“These are my people.”

In Washington and Oregon, we walked downtowns among tourists and the poor.

Sometimes we walked around with a protective barrier between ourselves and others.
Sometimes we met eyes, spoke, offered handshakes.

Sometimes the suffering of the poor and the privilege of our own travels
cracked open our hearts.
“These are my people.”

We read newspaper stories of local and global suffering.
These are my people and we are together forever.

Bill:
This week in my relationships, in meetings and in facing challenges,
I was able sometimes to keep before me my highest ideals
and my love for my people.
Sometimes…

If we keep stretching, keep focusing, keep reminding one another,
keep practicing, we are doing exactly what we should be doing.
Round and round we go again in the dance of life.

Legendary pioneers of modern dance
like Doris Humphrey spoke of dance as “fall and recovery,”
and Hanya Holm, famous for her choreography for musicals, like My Fair Lady,
brought both improvisation and repetition to her dances.

Hanya Holm brought life to that lyric, “I could have spread my wings
and done a thousand things I’ve never done before.”

Our dance of life is improvisational,
and we are trying to match intention with motion.
We are falling and recovering and increasing our consciousness.

Martial arts, like Aikido, teach students to overcome our fear of falling,
by practicing falling, not resisting, but falling and rolling, we spread our wings.

Preschoolers in beginning ballet classes, practice plies and traditional positions.
Mikhail Baryshnikov says no day goes by
that he doesn’t do those same basic barre exercises as the three year old.
Practice, practice, practice.

Barb:
In this dance of life, I’m practicing the mantra, “These are my people.”

I’m always surprised how long it takes me
to drive to Kaiser Oakland, park my car, and wait my turn for an appointment.

And I don’t have to go multiple times during the week
like I know some of you have.
And I’m not dealing with disease.
Right now I’m lucky and I know it and I still get frustrated.

Monday on a routine visit to the optical dispensary, all the usual was true.
So this short errand was taking up more and more of the day.
I kept breathing.
I kept trying to remember, “These are my people.”
I kept trying to look people in the eyes.
I was saying, “Yes, sir” and smiling at the gentleman who was the optician helping me.
He and I were enjoying some light, good moments.
He was helping me and simultaneously helping another optician
who was speaking to a woman,
who looked like a perfectly lovely person, like you or me,
who was having a bad day.
The frustrations had gotten to her.
She had a complaint, and she couldn’t let it go.
She went on and on, and both opticians were polite, direct, and clear.
The woman wasn’t budging.

It was the noon hour and a third optician returned from lunch.
Someone on the staff asked him, if it was warm outside.
He was light hearted and good natured and said,
“It’s a perfectly wonderful day.
In fact it’s so beautiful I think we should close the office
and all go have a picnic
and take all our lovely clients with us.”
There were soft, good spirited chuckles.

The next thing I knew the complaining woman was apologizing,
as my optician announced to me the costs for my glasses
and said, “that doesn’t include the tip!”
He and I shared a good laugh and I left.

As I walked to my car, I thought about how hard people work,
how much patience is called for,
how tipping applies to some jobs and not others,
and how much I wanted to appreciate these people.

When I got to my car,
I noticed there were three foot tall words spray painted
right there on the wall in front of me.
The graffiti said, “You are beautiful.”

After I got home, I wished I’d gone right out and bought a basket of picnic treats
and taken them back to the Optical Dispensary.
The more I’ve thought about this all week, the better the idea sounds.

When I’ve thought about how unusual that message is for graffiti,
I’ve thought of it as an affirmation of the impulse to give.

So, I’m hoping the same folks are working when I return to pick up my glasses.
I want to drop by with a little basket of picnic treats.

That’s practice.

Now this week, I also had my share of forgetting and frustration,
of speaking mindlessly instead of mindfully.

I forgot to say to myself, “These are my people.”

Being aware of falling is practice too.

Thursday night I dreamed I saw a person get run over,
flattened by a truck that drove off.
I picked her up and she was flat like a photograph.
I was crying, and then I saw her move her eyes and even start to smile.
She was going to live, get up, walk again.

People, who work a lot with dreams, tell us we are all the parts of our dreams.
So I know I’ve been a person responding with care.
I’ve also been rolled over and knocked flat.
I’ve been the truck, hitting and running, a typical week.
Bill:
The dance of life is like that for all of us.
We get up, we walk, we stumble, we get tripped,
we run over each other, we help each other, we get up.

I trust that the more we practice,
the more natural our best intentions, our highest ideals become.

Even the great teacher Rabbi Hillel,
who probably made a pledge to himself and to his God
to hold before himself always
his highest ideals and his love for his people…
even this great Rabbi, we imagine, got stuck in traffic,
ran what he thought would be a ten minute errand,
was stuck in a waiting room,
had miscommunication and lack of communication.
Small things happened that got to him big time.
The Rabbi said things he wished he hadn’t said,
did things he wished he hadn’t done.

He got up. He walked. He fell down.
He got up again.
He vowed again
to hold before himself always his highest ideals and his love for his people.

And they were all his people.

Meanwhile, amid all this trying and falling and trying, he kept dancing.

Through the good times and the bad times, too,
through every fall and recovery,
first one step and then another.

To dance is to be vulnerable,
open to something larger than ourselves that moves in us.
Grace happens and sometimes we are flowing,
one with the rhythm of the universe,
swaying, sashaying, finger snapping, hand clapping,
dancing at the speed of delight.

Let us keep dancing.

May I dance with you?