Butt In The Dirt

06/03/2018

CRUMBS! TOSS LIFE ASIDE

Once in a while . . . an awful long while . . . we run into the rain and forget that we are about to get wet, our feet are going to be muddied, our clothes clingy and revealing and our hair is going to look plastered.

It is in those very rare and pictorial moments that we touch the insane and the wonderment, the bizarre and free and we shrug off the mundane thoughts of day to day living.

These times do more than that however -

They cast aside the humdrum, ever-watchful mannerisms and behaviours which keep us trudging along the same paths, down the same habitual actions and responses. 

These moments touch something that is sacred.

In these delightful 'forgettingnesses' of organised life, a precious presence watches from the corner of our eye . . . from the periphery of our normal existence. It watches, hidden but hoping to dance and join in. 

The walls that we build from young children, are brick by brick cemented into place to protect us from all that would hurt us. These monsters, we are taught, are held at bay by the walls that are built - walls that not only keep monsters out - but everything that seems magical or sacred or holy or enchanting. All of it, stitched together and sewn up into one trundle of invisible mysteries. 

Yet, as a people, we cannot but listen and watch for something that we cannot explain, that defies definition and boggles the ordinary mind. We catch it every so often when we slip up, we are tired or we relax our vigilance and we think we see something 

- so fleeting.

Quickly, the walls and bricks fortify their position and the moment is lost and the walls stand and we have a mundane answer for what we thought we encountered.

When the rain falls and the drops dance and the lightening and thunder create the perfect disco, we can forget for a moment that there are walls. If we throw caution to the wind and defy the germs, ignore the cold and actually understand that rain never melted anyone, we would come ever so close to that chance encounter with the sacred . . . the magical and the holy.

For that one moment, made invisible, the walls that protect us disappear and we are faced with the great unknown where apparently all monsters reside. 

Except, if we look a little closer, the monster myths are only shadows that dance too, to the heavenly music, free to come and go. 

And just there, to the left stands the sacred presence.

It is as if you are looking at yourself, but a you who holds all the gifts and abilities, powers and talents, that you never knew existed, for you were always closed behind the walls.

Change can be small but the rewards can be everlasting. A dance in the rain - doing something outrageous - breaking taboo and changing the way you do things, how you speak about yourself and going a different way to work, can usher in a miracle from behind the wall!

-Jaylee Balch -