The Girl Who Danced in the Bathroom

You’ve seen the move. It is Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music; Belle in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.  Arms wide, twirling, face to the sky.

My daily commute has me transferring trains at 30^th Street station twice each day. One evening recently on my way home I was in the ladies room. On my way out the door, paper towel in hand, I glimpsed something which made no sense, but changed the rest of my evening.

Pure. Unbridled. Joy.

This young woman looked younger than me – though I’m no good judge of age – and for some reason on her way into the ladies room, in the midst of the mundane exchange of people coming in and going out, she twirled. Her face and eyes smiling; her body posture open.  What a peculiar and beautifully joyful sight.

Now, I’m no psychiatrist like some at St. Martin’s and no Energy Medicine Specialist like my friend Barbara, but something real happened. A psychic energy transfer. We talk about emotions being contagious, we talk about energy flow. It was as if this woman’s cup of joy was overflowing and the energy of that needed to get out. She couldn’t contain it lest she burst. It went flying out in all directions and landed on me.  And I was filled with it.

I know nothing of this woman, but she transferred to me powerful energy in that moment. Being present to her joy was palpable, even in the few seconds it took to walk by on my way out the door.  I keep thinking of her now, close to a week later. How beautiful the joy. And the energy of that lingers when I think of it.

I’m conditioned to see this and speak of God. Of the Holy Spirit working in and moving through us in these moments of energy exchange. Of God blessing one and that blessing so filling an open heart that it can do nothing but increase exponentially and spread outward.

I had another experience just Tuesday. Given to me this time not by a person, but the sky.  Out the train window I looked up from my smartphone and what met my eyes was brilliant. The sky was pink, blue, fuchsia, red, and orange; and changing each moment I watched. The clouds were mixed diagonal lines to the right and leopard spots to the left. And the buildings black shadows against the canvas.  I was nearly frantic with excitement from the energy of its beauty. I desperately tried to take a photo but, especially through the window, the camera couldn’t capture the vibrancy of the colors that my eyes blessedly can discern.  I stared hard at it hoping to fuse the image onto my brain. Full of awe and wonder, “The Sky!” I wanted to shout, “Quick, everyone look at the sky! See its brilliance!”  Not one to want to look crazy or make a scene on a train full of strangers, I impotently posted to Facebook.

It all makes me wonder – what other joys am I missing? What have I not looked up to see, to feel? And how have I shared my overflowing cup when I have been so filled with joy? What has brought you joy recently? How have you shared that joy? How have you returned to God the blessings and beauty that God has bestowed upon us and shares through each of us?

Where is your girl dancing in the bathroom? What is your brilliant sky? I want to hear about it. Share the joy.

- Natalee Hill

A related video worth watching, from TedxSF.

Don’t Take, Don’t Eat: A Case for Adoration

For our 20^th Anniversary my wife and I went to New York City and indulged in a few of our favorite things. We ate good food, spent an evening at the Metropolitan Opera, and immersed ourselves in art museums. My wife and I have the same approach to art museums. Our pace is lugubrious; we spend up to 10 or 15 minutes with a single painting, relating to it from different distances and angles. Our attitude is reverent and our experience is a quiet form of ecstasy, a communion with God mediated by beauty. Just try to pry me away from a Rothko.

What was new for us on this pilgrimage to MOMA was the inability of our peers to also be present in the moment with the art. We were shocked by the number of people recording the art with cameras and phones. There in front of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” patron after patron stopped only long enough to take a ‘selfie’* with the masterpiece. Others stalked the gallery and only observed the painting through their view finders. 

The new cultural practice on display seemed profoundly sad to me. Why record your presence with this great artistry if you were never present to it in the first place? The cultural practices of consumerism and individualism had decidedly invaded the place. The point of viewing art had been transformed from a perspective of revelation from beyond ourselves that draws us into a new space of thought, feeling, and spirit to a perspective of documenting the fact that “I was present here,” and “I saw this” and “I have this to take home.”

The goal was to take and to have. The significance came from showing I was present to an absent audience. 

Maybe I am a premature curmudgeon, but I found this behavior appalling and deeply concerning. When a man took video of Monet’s “Water Lilies” by panning across the room-sized panels, I said to myself, “Do you know what you are missing?” Others in the room were slowed down and almost forced to sit in awe of Monet’s rendering of time and eternity, heavens and earth comingled on the radiant surface of his pond at Giverney.  

The room with the “Water Lilies” was a thin place of transcendent possibility. There is no taking or having or inserting self, there is no capturing, not even in words or music. There is experiencing, being present, being captured by the art and taken away by it, beyond ourselves.

This is adoration. Adoration is a form of prayer where we are pulled from our pre-occupation with self and occupied with love and awe for what gestures toward God. In the Church of the Middle Ages the consecrated bread and wine of communion were often reserved for adoration and most regular folk only adored the host and did not consume it all. Being in relationship with the gift Christ gave – the gift of his life – was enough inspiration and nurture for the adoring soul.

Now, this path of adoration was fairly alien to me until I had my experience at MOMA, where taking and consuming had become the dominant patterns of relating. It made me think; what if adoration is good medicine for our consumption-sick souls and society? We certainly need alternative ways of behaving that are not so fiercely desirous of satisfaction by possession and which almost always cause us to feel emptier in the end.

There is that brief moment where taking and having give us a great rush of pleasure. Our will to power is effective and builds up our ego. Almost always the feeling wears off as one more form of false transcendence. Indeed, the possessing often becomes a burden or only is reactivated as a pleasure when another person notices what we own and gives us a flash of pride.

Don’t take, don’t eat. Jesus says the opposite when he offers himself to us in the meal that remembers his sacrifice for us. He says, “Take, Eat, this is given for you.” We are blessed to take and eat every Sunday and to be fed by Christ, reminded that our life is a gift given and not our possession. However, just as I am suspicious of middle class/bourgeois folks claiming, “God is with me” in an easy way, I am suspicious of folks addicted to consumption adding Christ to the list of things we consume. What if the path and prayer of adoration – not taking, not eating – could be a corrective spiritual path for what ails us?

- The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel

*A ‘selfie’ is when you extend your camera out from your body and take a picture of yourself with another person, alone, or in a special place.