Category: dance

Thrilling Guest Thursday: Lynn D. Morrissey

 
Let the name of the LORD be praised,
both now and forevermore. 
(Psalm 113:2 NIV)
 
 
Please welcome, my friend and passionate lover of God, Lynn Morrissey. She waltzes through words with ease, always keeping us in step with the tune of God’s gracious invitation to live life fully no matter which season we find ourselves embracing.

(Lynn D. Morrissey, is a Certified Journal Facilitator (CJF), founder of Heartsight Journaling, a ministry for reflective journal-writing, author of Love Letters to God: Deeper Intimacy through Written Prayer and other books, contributor to numerous bestsellers, an AWSA and CLASS speaker, and professional soloist. She and her beloved husband, Michael, have been married since 1975 and have a college-age daughter, Sheridan. They live in St. Louis, Missouri. You may contact Lynn at words@brick.net.)
 
 
 
Now
(Lynn D. Morrissey)
 
Autumn is the season of urgency, the season that beckons us to behold breathtaking beauty and kaleidoscopic colors—now—before shifting winds and colder climes send leaves shimmying from limbs. They dance with abandon in the breeze before falling to the ground, where they’ll soon decay.
Autumn bespeaks glory, but especially glory that fleets.
Autumn proclaims,
            “Wake up.
Take note.
Time is short.
Life is short.
Live with gusto until a gust of wind blows you, too, to the ground, to your place of final rest.”
Now that my husband Michael and I have begun dipping into a decidedly autumnal decade, I have wondered if, like those vibrant falling leaves, we are dancing too—shimmying and shimmering with glory, relishing every magnificent moment, living colorfully and daringly; or are we clinging tenaciously to the status quo and to stifling stagnation? Our time here, our time together is evanescent. Are we making the most of our days?  Like autumn’s glory, I want us to go out in an audacious glow!
 
 
 
 
So, that brings me to the apple orchard. Two autumns ago, Michael and I were picking apples at a local orchard for luscious pie-baking back home. This has become an annual ritual, and while we could probably buy apples cheaper and certainly easier at the grocery, we love the thrill of driving carefree along the Mississippi River to the orchard and wending our way through a tangle of top-heavy trees, over-bent with bobbing crimson globes.
This time, and I can’t explain it, a sudden urge swept over me. I don’t know if it were the invigorating air, or the apples’ pungent scent, or the rows of trees queued up like a line dance, but I had to enter in. I had to dance—justdance, oblivious to how I looked, unintimidated by who was looking, uninhibited by what I feared. I longed to grab my partner’s hand and weave a waltz through a trellis of trees.
But Michael, my husband, by beloved life-partner through thick and thin, just wouldn’t dance. He wouldn’t enter into the moment, because he thought he couldn’t. And despite my coaxing, and my “It-doesn’t-matter-whether-or-not-you-think-you-can-dance-or-who-might-be-watching” plea, he was immovable.
Mike would. not. budge.
And it’s at that moment, that I knew this was more than an invitation to dance. I was daring him to enter a reckless adventure, to kick up his heels in delight, to abandon rules without thinking, to move without knowing the steps, to risk looking foolish when people gawked, to live far away from the guidelines and sidelines of life.
But Michael said no.
Then he was silent.
And in that pregnant pause, that muted moment, I heard soundless words crescendo like a clarion call from a buried heart-place:
I am your Partner. Will you dance with Me?
                                   
And I knew.
I knew that I had been sitting on the sidelines—at first, because God had called me there, away from a fruitful ministry, when it made absolutely no sense to me. I had obeyed; but at that moment in the orchard, I realized that I had stayed too long—longer than God had intended—and the sidelines had become barricades to growth, adventure, and joy. God had been calling me back into life’s dance some time before, and I was waiting like a wilting wallflower in the shadows. At this moment, He was extending His hand like a lifeline, beckoning me back onto the dance floor before autumn faded to winter. It was time to act now, or miss this opportunity forever.
I also decided to extend the opportunity to Michael one more time, and wrote this poem for him that Christmas.
 
source
Last Dance
“I don’t dance in apple orchards,” you say,
with a straight face, then a smile,
but all the while, my hand extends to yours.
“Come,” I say, “please dance.”
But you won’t bend.
 “I don’t dance in apple orchards,” you stress.
And then, you wink.
But dare I ask again?
I know that you are resolute,
and I know that life will end
in an absolute blink, in the time it takes
for these apples, weighty with August’s wine,
to loosen from limp stems in a gust of ruthless wind
and fall and bruise and roll and roil                                       
into bubbling decay.
“I don’t dance,” you say.
But if not now, then when?
And if not here, between these choreographed rows of
red-lanterned trees, festooned for plein-air dance
(like Sargent’s lanterned garden all aglow with twilight),
then where?
The painter highlights the evanescent hour,
and daily, feverishly dances transient light onto canvas,
knowing magic soon will end.
Is it possible to compress beauty?
Yes.
He does.
We must.                    
I dare to ask again:
Will you thrust yourself into my arms
and commence this pas de deux?
Don’t fret about the steps.                 
Let the magic lead . . .
All life’s a dance
begging you to enter in,
to move in its embrace.
Take your cue:
Trace how the apples dance from breeze-swayed boughs,
before they fall.
They whisper,
            “Now.
Please, now.
Please now.”

 

To what dance is God beckoning you to join Him
—now—before it’s too late?
 
 
(Copyright 2013. Lynn D. Morrissey. All Rights Reserved.)

 
 
Posted on by kelrohlf 11

Dance: To Move Your Body

Let them praise his name in the dance: 
let them sing praises unto him with the timbrel and harp.
For the Lord taketh pleasure in his people: 
he will beautify the meek with salvation.
(Psalm 149:3-4 KJV)


This old photo was on some mail I got from the St. Louis History Museum,
 thought it fit well with our theme today.
 It was either this or a video of me dancing! I figured you’d prefer this!

Dancing may be the last thing on your mind when you think of quiet. If you have no rhythm, like myself, you may  want to skip this idea completely. But even as I admit that I am rhythm deficient, I still like to dance unto the Lord! I love to crank up the praise music when no one is home and just move as the Spirit leads. But dance is not the only kind of movement that draws us closer to God. 

Scripture often likens our relationship with Him as a walk or even a race. I think dancing, walking, running or any exercise can give us a focus that clears our minds, placing us in a posture for deeper listening to God.

Pam Farrel agrees. Listen in as she relates her experience with dance and exercise as means to connect with God in the quiet of our hearts. (If you are kinesthetic learner, you’re gonna love this. If you’re not, you should still give this idea a try. See if God shows up in a way you never experienced before!)

Pam does admit that she is a trained dancer and gymnast, but still there is value in trying a new experience even if you’re not an expert:

I took a Jewish folk-dance class and the holiness of dance became real to me. As the teacher explained the meaning of the dances and their steps, I began to grasp the full picture of God’s plan. One dance had a step for water . . . I thought about how Jesus said, “I am the living water.”

At the moment my feet were moving to the music and doing the steps  that meant water, I knew that for me the living water is what I needed for survival . . . I had intellectually known that for years  and years, but in that moment my whole body could respond to the truth of that one simple phrase in Scripture.

If dancing doesn’t appeal to you, try taking a walk or jogging with praise music or riding your bike with the intention of listening to God.

Pam shares some research and  her experience with exercise:

Professional counselor Earl Henslin says that often it is after intense exercise and rest that our minds think clearest. I also have seen that I am most creative after I have exercised and prayed. It is as if those two activities serve as an eraser on the chalkboard of my life, wiping away the superfluous noise of busyness.

©Pam Farrel from 30 Ways to Wake Up Your Quiet Time (IVP). For more devotional books by Pam http://www.Love-wise.com


Can you share a time when physical activity 
helped you to connect with God?
Posted on by kelrohlf 7

My True Love Gave To Me

 
Therefore He is able to save completely those who come to God through Him, because He always lives to intercede for them.
(Hebrews 7:25 NIV)
 
 

As I reflect back on this day, I see so many gifts from the Beloved…almost like the twelve days of Christmas all over again.

At the first watch of the morning my true love gave to me breakfast with my nieces and nephews and the brisk joy of being the
bus stop “mom” in the cold.

At the second watch of the morning, I came home for a second cup of coffee and sadly noticed that my two goldfish were dead. (Not a gift, but a fresh grief that fit in with something else I was contemplating later in the day.)

At the third watch of the morning, I started a time of praying following a format from The Hour That Changes the World  by Dick Eastman. He recommends twelve aspects of prayer that start and end with praise. I don’t follow this format everyday, but the twelve aspects of prayer are a challenging and thorough pattern to follow.

Lately when I observe the twelve steps, I draw a picture to record my “prayer notes.” In honor of my hobo honeymoon, I sketched a roundhouse, where trains are moved in a circle to change tracks.


I could never share all the things I gleaned today in one post. I took a trip through Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old &New Testament Words by William D. Mounce to look up the meaning of the twelve aspects of prayer. The best word I found was the Hebrew word for “confess”, which transliterates to “yada.” It made me smile because, I thought maybe God hears us say “yada, yada, yada,” when we keep coming back with the same sins to confess over and over again. Not that sin is a joke, but it did give me a giggle.

Okay, it’s getting late and to list twelve more gifts from today might get tedious for you, even though I found each one perfectly thoughtful and fitted for me.

At the twelfth watch of the evening, my true love gave to me a night to cherish. We went to our local church to worship and share communion with the congregation. I joined my sister and her four kids, who had various levels of response to the service from quiet observation to overwhelmed by the loudness to avid interest to enthusiastic dancing and jumping. The youngest niece (5) thought it great fun to dance, jump and clap to the music and the oldest (11) even joined in for awhile.

It was a joy to freely express our adoration and devotion before the Lord. On the way home, my youngest niece and I opted to walk home. She was barefoot, because her “high heels” hurt her feet, but she is NOT phased by the cold. I called her our “wee Scottish bairn.” Once we navigated the parking lot and got on the sidewalk, she started running down the hill toward her street, so I joined her. After a few hundred feet, I offered her my socks, and she put them on and took off running again, squealing: “I’m a wee Scottish bairn and a wee Scottish bairn has to do what she has to do.” And I shouted behind her, ” I love you, Loryn!” “You love God!” “You’re the best!” What a way to finish a beautiful evening abandoning ourselves to the Beloved.

Another touching moment was during communion, when she whispered loudly to me, while pointing up at the stage, “Aunt Kel, when I grow up, I want to be like that man.” She was pointing at the pastor, who was leading us in communion. I asked her later, why she wanted to be like that man. She said, “Because I want to learn about God.” What a wee delight, she is!

Posted on by kelrohlf 8