On a trip to Asheville in early May, we stopped and experienced the drum circle that is a standing tradition on Friday nights. Visitors and residents alike sit, stand, dance, play, and embody what it means to be alive and truly free. This is the Kin-dom of God: open and embracing all who come regardless of their appearance, beliefs, or who they love. The little children also came: they moved to the beat, or against the beat, or in syncopated half-steps that matched only the rhythm of their hearts. This is what it means to be a participant in the Kin-dom: smile, dance, wave, welcome new arrivals with open hearts and open arms. After a couple moments of watching, I couldn't help but move in tandem with the drums and let my own heart's rhythm let me fold myself into the music.
I wanted to stay in that spot, swaying back and forth, forever. To watch the men, women, non-gender-conforming/non-label-claiming folks, and children dance, skitter, embrace, and throw their heads back in divinely joyful laughter. Genuine expression, warm hospitality, a welcome into the rhythm of shared life in the drum circle: this is the life I strive to live, the way I want to dance, the welcome I seek to extend to all I meet.
The drum circle reminded me that God is truly all around, everywhere, inside of each of us. How else could we respond to the beat of a drum, the beats of a hundred drums, with a sparkle in our eyes and a willing movement in our steps, smiling at each and every manifestation of the God Who Dances With Us? The drum circle reminded me to look at every person as if she/he/they are God, for they truly are: they are made in God's image, out of the love of God, intended to live out that love in all that they do. So now, when I'm feeling sad or downtrodden, I simply look at people--that stunning array that shows us only a fraction of who God is, was, and can be for us. The God who is texting everyone the photos of the drum circle in progress, right next to the God dancing with Her child while wearing a pink fuzzy top hat, immediately in front of the God who embraces His dancing partner as they together move to their unique rhythms, to the left of the God embodied in the movement of God's children who smile and laugh as if they know no pain.
But we all know pain: the drum circle's magic is that everyone brings who they are into the circle. Their abilities, their different capacities for love and relationship and physical engagement, their needs and desires and wants, their joy and their aching hearts. No baggage is unwelcome and no baggage is left behind. God is big enough to hold all of it, God welcomes us and embraces us just as we are--whether you've got a matched set of leather valises or a dusty, world-worn duffel bag full to bursting. God is big enough to stretch out God's (anthropomorphized) hand past where we are told that God ends, past our hurts and joys and pains, past the horizons of our imaginations.
This is why, for me, God can only be (more) fully experienced in community (I would argue that we cannot experience the true fullness of God and live). Without the presence of others, others made in the image of God, how can we truly know what it means to have faith in ourselves, faith in each other, faith in the future?
Today I am thankful for those shared moments in the drum circle, the moments in which I saw God, praised God, and danced with God in community.
No comments:
Post a Comment