I have always loved this quote. Some where deep in my heart it makes me happy. Perhaps I have occasionally been one of those people, beating to my own drum (as my mom used to tell me when I was little). But I truely saw the embodiment of this quote yesterday morning when Rodney and I were at the farmer's market.
5:55 read my clock. Rodney leaves the house promptly at 6 to get the weekly produce at the Pavas farmer's market. Ugh. I did not want to get out of bed. Fifteen more minutes, please!!! Nope...up and at 'em. I don't think I said two words to Rodney on the way over. My caffeine-deprived brain still wasn't firing correctly. We passed the usual vendors. Stopped for our lettuces from the big family. Got our tomatoes from Tex, the Tico with the wide brimmed, cowboy hat. Fish guy, check.Then something usual caught my eye. An ordinary man, clean shaven, shaggy hair, washed face, Hawaiian shirt, leather shoes, long, dark coat with a scarf artistically drapes around his neck: dancing. More like conducting and moving to the rhythm of unheard concertos. I could see tiny earphones pumping undoubtedly sweet melodies into his head from an iPod in his pocket. The rhapsody must have been divine, because it spilled from his head down his arms out through his fingertips and into a spontaneous expression of movement. Vendors stopped to stare. He didn't notice. People in the streets moved out of his way. He shook fruit from a stand as if it could add its pizzicato to the orchestra, oblivious to the world that was not joining in his euphony.
Rodney was buying pineapples. The man at the stand next to our pineapple man noticed my stare. He stared, too. Then leaned in close and whispered to me, "Gotta watch out for that one." I leaned back, "If more people in the world would dance, we would have fewer problems." He was a bit shocked at my tart response. I was a bit put-off by his. There was nothing malicious in the man. There was nothing weird or even creepy about him what-so-ever. I had a split second thought that maybe this was one of those angels that God sends to make the wise of the world look foolish and the foolish to the world a dancer before the King of the Universe.
Rodney asked if we should talk to him. I wanted to. And yet didn't. I liked the mystery of not knowing who he is, yet longed to know who he is. What was he listening to? Why did it move him so? I wish I had my camera. And yet that also feels like an intrusion on a some how intimate moment and memory, caught between time and space. Nothing could capture the innocence and beauty as being there live.
I remembered my own days in elementary school when I would put on Mozart and Beethoven in my bedroom and pretend to conduct imaginary symphonies using glitter sticks and broken radio antennae. Moving to the music unashamedly. When did I stop? Why did I stop? Was it when I realized others might see and make fun of me? That it's not "socially appropriate" to be see spontaneously dancing in the streets?
This post is so closely related to my recent one on exercise: Are you willing to do the work the Lord has called you to do even when no one else shows up? I think this is an even deeper reflection into: Are you willing to dance before the Lord when the rest of the world thinks you're insane because they can't hear the music in your heart? Deeper still, are you willing to dance WITH the Lord in the intimate dance of faith and complete trust, no matter where He leads?
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