Unmoved
An entry for LJ Idol, Season 8, week 1: "When you pray, move your feet."
There have been times in my life when I've danced.
There have been times in my life when I've prayed.
That sounds a lot like I'm backing into a story, but it's the only place I know to start. I can't be the only one around who doesn't remember a time before they were able to do both; I first walked forward in a church - and put on a leotard (not at the same time) - at the age of three.
I'm not sure how good I was at either one when I was a child - all I know is that I couldn't do without them. There was always tap, always ballet, always praise the Lord. Even though back then my feet didn't always move right. Even though my parents' split, constant relocating, and attendant awkwardness made me feel a little like the Lord didn't always listen.
Still, a self-conscious, bookish girl can only take so much taunting before she hangs it up. I was 12 when I quit dance classes. I kept dancing - in front of my bedroom mirror, even at school functions - but I didn't practice, and I didn't try at all if I didn't feel safe. Which was often.
It took a lot longer for me to give up on prayer. I bounced from church to church with friends on the weeks when I wasn't thrown there by my father and stepmother. The major unifying thread in my life is never completely feeling I belong anywhere, though, and church wasn't really an exception.
When I was 21 - ah, the age inversion - I thought that had changed. I had beautiful, amazing friends and a group unlike any I'd ever worshipped with. I was dancing more again, next to and in front of and in the arms of those friends.
And I was praying. Oh, how I was praying. Everywhere I went. Walking campus. In Bible studies. In the dorm after a bad day. Except that I gradually stopped feeling that it was working. Things happened to me, to others, that didn't make sense in our framework.
While that made a lot of people I knew try to tighten the frame...it made still others try to shove me aside. With a single, stunning exception, they succeeded. I was left with only one, and all we really had was each other.
Then, I could only move my body and pray out my soul...in my mind. I tried in fits and starts to do it elsewise - a class here, a new type of faith there - but by then, I was only a dabbler. An eclectic. More than a bit of a heathen. A questioner, finally finding herself in the place she knew she belonged: outside, looking in.
Time and tide have taken me even further away from a place where I can go to my knees...or move my feet. A class here, a ritual there. When I turn once, my equilibrium goes into a tailspin. My body doesn't know if it's harder to get down on the floor, or get up from it. My back and ankles don't want to hold me up anymore.
And try as I might...desperately as I may wish...I can neither pray, nor stop believing. I believe that Someone, Something is out there. I've seen Them in action more times than I can recount.
But I can't get it back, that feeling that I can ask and the universe will deliver what I need - if not answers or rewards, at least solace or peace. Never in my life have I been so surrounded with people I trust, who love me back the same way I love them. And never in my life have I felt less in tune with the Divine.
I can't help but think there's a connection. I know all the words and the practices; I feel the rhythms and hear the music. My body and soul just won't cooperate. Sometimes it's because they hurt too much. Sometimes it's because taking a chance on hurting more than I do would be madness.
Always I wonder: is it the pain that makes me unable? Or does the inability create the pain?
For me, the one thing has always fed into the other, to the point where I've never known which came first, never known where one starts and the other ends. Which would seem to say that if I start to do one, maybe I can do the other, too.
For now, I fall back on the other things that move my mind and stir my heart. The things I remember learning a few years later, the things that have never left or forsaken me. My hands still make magic from bowls and pans and flour and spice. Dreams and worlds flow from my fingers, all but unstoppable. It's not enough...and yet it has to be.
Until my body lets go of the ache in every fiber.
Until my soul turns a throb into a heartbeat.
Until I can pray.
Until I can move my feet.
There have been times in my life when I've danced.
There have been times in my life when I've prayed.
That sounds a lot like I'm backing into a story, but it's the only place I know to start. I can't be the only one around who doesn't remember a time before they were able to do both; I first walked forward in a church - and put on a leotard (not at the same time) - at the age of three.
I'm not sure how good I was at either one when I was a child - all I know is that I couldn't do without them. There was always tap, always ballet, always praise the Lord. Even though back then my feet didn't always move right. Even though my parents' split, constant relocating, and attendant awkwardness made me feel a little like the Lord didn't always listen.
Still, a self-conscious, bookish girl can only take so much taunting before she hangs it up. I was 12 when I quit dance classes. I kept dancing - in front of my bedroom mirror, even at school functions - but I didn't practice, and I didn't try at all if I didn't feel safe. Which was often.
It took a lot longer for me to give up on prayer. I bounced from church to church with friends on the weeks when I wasn't thrown there by my father and stepmother. The major unifying thread in my life is never completely feeling I belong anywhere, though, and church wasn't really an exception.
When I was 21 - ah, the age inversion - I thought that had changed. I had beautiful, amazing friends and a group unlike any I'd ever worshipped with. I was dancing more again, next to and in front of and in the arms of those friends.
And I was praying. Oh, how I was praying. Everywhere I went. Walking campus. In Bible studies. In the dorm after a bad day. Except that I gradually stopped feeling that it was working. Things happened to me, to others, that didn't make sense in our framework.
While that made a lot of people I knew try to tighten the frame...it made still others try to shove me aside. With a single, stunning exception, they succeeded. I was left with only one, and all we really had was each other.
Then, I could only move my body and pray out my soul...in my mind. I tried in fits and starts to do it elsewise - a class here, a new type of faith there - but by then, I was only a dabbler. An eclectic. More than a bit of a heathen. A questioner, finally finding herself in the place she knew she belonged: outside, looking in.
Time and tide have taken me even further away from a place where I can go to my knees...or move my feet. A class here, a ritual there. When I turn once, my equilibrium goes into a tailspin. My body doesn't know if it's harder to get down on the floor, or get up from it. My back and ankles don't want to hold me up anymore.
And try as I might...desperately as I may wish...I can neither pray, nor stop believing. I believe that Someone, Something is out there. I've seen Them in action more times than I can recount.
But I can't get it back, that feeling that I can ask and the universe will deliver what I need - if not answers or rewards, at least solace or peace. Never in my life have I been so surrounded with people I trust, who love me back the same way I love them. And never in my life have I felt less in tune with the Divine.
I can't help but think there's a connection. I know all the words and the practices; I feel the rhythms and hear the music. My body and soul just won't cooperate. Sometimes it's because they hurt too much. Sometimes it's because taking a chance on hurting more than I do would be madness.
Always I wonder: is it the pain that makes me unable? Or does the inability create the pain?
For me, the one thing has always fed into the other, to the point where I've never known which came first, never known where one starts and the other ends. Which would seem to say that if I start to do one, maybe I can do the other, too.
For now, I fall back on the other things that move my mind and stir my heart. The things I remember learning a few years later, the things that have never left or forsaken me. My hands still make magic from bowls and pans and flour and spice. Dreams and worlds flow from my fingers, all but unstoppable. It's not enough...and yet it has to be.
Until my body lets go of the ache in every fiber.
Until my soul turns a throb into a heartbeat.
Until I can pray.
Until I can move my feet.