Tonight, I passed another sort of lovely Festival evening, again dancing plus eating beignets, but this time at L’Arche, in the midst of people dressed up in costumes made of I don’t know what. No pretense, no style, all fun. And as I helped twirl Yolande in her wheelchair and aided Dalila in dancing, I couldn’t help but realize the extremes of my dancing life over the mere last three years. Some of my favorite moments in D.C. were spent at karaoke and dance parties at Shalom House. We became a bit known among SOME’s houses during that year for the karaoke parties, and as a resident and friend later shared, “That was the first time I’ve ever had fun without alcohol. I didn’t know I could do that.” Huh, makes you stop to think a bit. Then last year, social ballroom lessons with friends, dinner out at Greek restaurants in the neighborhood before wherein the finer points of what it means to be an “evangelical” for our generation or someone’s latest ecclesiastical crisis (I kid you not.) were discussed. And now this year, February 5, 2008, Festival at L’Arche as only a motley crew of loved and loving people can enjoy.
Although it was rainy earlier today, tonight it cleared and as I road my bike home, I peddled slowly, breathing in the wet fresh air. I coasted along the street which leads to my apartment complex and did what I most love to do on a bike under the cover of night and empty streets. I flung my legs out on each side in the air and swung them back and forth and up. I slid into my driveway, but not ready to stop just yet, I flew in a circle around the plaza, legs flung again. I lovingly locked up my bike and whistled “La Vie en Rose” as I rambled up to my apartment. At one point I even skipped. Standing on my balcony a few minutes later, I looked out over singly lit windows in Compiegne apartments. I turned around and gazed back into mine darkened, shadows dancing in the play between my stove light and wind blown trees limbs. My apartment after one day of not being picked up in fragments testifies my life—an orange for dinner left uneaten on the counter; my tumbling pile of Bible, journal, and books I’m in the middle of on my bed; my unmarked voting ballot on my desk; the announcement for GBU’s national congress that I need to send in lying on my floor; a scarf flung; cards sent in love tacked to my wall and some fallen on the floor; plants dead and dying because I lack the green thumb required to keep an ivy alive!
I live here yet I live out there too, where there’s dancing and laughter and joy immeasurable. Where people are worth something simply because they are. Where students’ lives are not simply marked off by their days of studies but by their inquiries into how to know God. Where friends and family matter so much you wake up early and stay up late to make phone calls happen. Where you learn to laugh in another language despite missing the details of why you do. Where I learn what it means to worship the God of Isaiah, who judged and redeemed all nations because of great jealousy and great love and great affinity for justice and righteousness and holiness. Where I try to listen for what God is doing and would do in France and in this world. Where I enter into facing my own need in the midst of having few resources to meet them, save for the embrace and love of my dear brother Jesus and ever-present father God.
It’s a good world, here and there—Chicago, D.C., Compiegne, friends, L’Arche, Shalom, GBU, family—and tonight my soul is prepared for Lent. Forty days in the desert is supposed to be hard, but for some reason tonight, dancing for the first time since August, riding freely on my bike down unimpeded streets, God draws near in this invitation into wandering, into learning to thirst and hunger and be replenished beyond means of how we reason we should be.
I think I am overwhelmed at the gift of my life. I often am and before I die, I’m sure I will say this a million times--how do I get to live this? Jesus is near and dear to me and he makes each moment so real and alive, I can feel him in it. Perhaps I and we want to contain Jesus to specific moments where he is preached, wherein quantifiable results of his living and dying and living again can be counted. And we are right to seek after and work for those. But it is also right, I think, to see Jesus elsewhere. To enjoy an evening on your balcony in his name. To fly home on an old bike singing the praises of his nearness. To dance with others during an evening of indulgence, lavishly dipping one’s self into his joy over such magnificent creations. Wouldn’t he want us, as we enter the desert, to know that his presence encompasses our every passing moment?
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