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JD Hancock via Compfight
“There comes a time when it is vitally important for your spiritual health to drop your clothes, look in the mirror, and say, ‘Here I am. This is the body-like-no-other that my life has shaped. I live here. This is my soul’s address.’ ” ~Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World
I love Matt Harding’s most recent video in which people of the world — all ages, abilities, and sizes — gather around the Seattleite to shake their dance thing, in all their unselfconscious glory. It’s refreshing to see people unfettered by rules and simply dancing for the sake of movement, not for prettiness or prescription.
I am currently dating a dancer and I have never felt more self-conscious about my ability (or lack thereof) when it comes to the realm of dancing. Being a free-spirited dancer, I don’t like being confined by the direction and whims of a partner. “Perhaps this is a metaphor for my life?” she says, sarcastically to herself.
One of my favorite dancers in Matt’s video was an overweight woman with a cane, shimmying to the beat of her own rhythm in the left side of the shot from Caracas, Venezuela. So often I see overweight people sitting on the sidelines, self-conscious in their size and place among people smaller than them.
What would humanity look like if we were all comfortable inhabitants of our own “address?”
I’ll take baby steps to work out my own residency. This evening I’ll be attending a 5-hour, “Dance your cash off” charity event with proceeds benefiting 826 Seattle. Perhaps this will be a good place to start?
As always, thanks for reading.
~Ro