This weekend was my turn to clean the little church I attend. Headphones on and the music breathing in my brain I began to sweep the dining hall. The week’s events played tag with the guitar chords and harmony on the MP3. The dust mop was taller than me, which I realize is not saying much, but it is big. I found myself moving with the music. It was inevitable. The pull was too much. The mop handle became my Fred Astaire and I was Ginger Rogers – you can laugh now, better yet guffaw. We twirled and glided and a nifty back bend, rumor has it, went on display.
Sensibility was regained and the task at hand completed. Up the stairs to sweep the entrance. On my way back down, the beat between my ears reached down to my little feet. There I stood, head bobbing slightly with the music stair staring. Could I? Do I dare? She bends her knees. She hops, she skips she dances down the stairs! She scores! A gopher dance, more my style, spontaneously broke out.
My work done my dance partner was returned to the broom closet with heartfelt thanks. As the door shut, the MP3 shifted to storytelling songs. Harry Chapin’s voice, singing “Mr. Tanner” drifted in my soul,
“He sang softly to himself as he sorted through the clothes.
Music was his life, it was not his livelihood,
and it made him feel so happy and it made him feel so good.
And he sang from his heart and he sang from his soul.
(And) he did not know how well he sang; It just made him whole.”
Disconnected loose pearls, treasures in themselves, when tied together form a necklace of love, laughter, life and hope. Steel toed shoes hung up in and with pain. Laughing, hope and a friend’s gentle touch spilling over in my heart like coffee in a full cup. Hiking boots folded in the seated position of mindfulness and breath. A mother bear defends from the heart and not her steel claws. A little gopher finds a dance partner. Dancing and writing, may not be my livelihood, but they make me feel happy, they make me feel whole. They are the thread of life that connects the treasured pearls.
