All she wants to do is dance

Today was my last day of dance classes. I found myself being oddly melancholy and nostalgic about it. It's pretty hard for adults to take dance classes....finding time is hard enough, not to mention that classes are expensive. I feel so thankful to have had the opportunity to be regularly training in dance technique for ten years now, and it feels like that chapter in my life is closing a little bit now.

Other seniors in my Modern dance class were getting a bit teary eyed today, too. Dance is one of those majors you get kind of attached to. No one studies dance at the university level because they think they're going to make big money or be famous. We do it because we love it and it gives us an extra four years to enjoy and perfect our craft. People don't usually believe it when I tell them, but Dance has been a much harder subject to study than English (my other major). In a regular class, you can show up and kind of tune out behind your desk if you're tired or having a bad day. In dance, you have to be physically active and engaged the entire time. You have to be willing to get critiqued or to just fail as you try to perform a combination. You have to be ready for the possibility of physical injuries (mine have included a pinched nerve in my back, sprained ankles, tendonitis, and more bruises, blisters, scraped knees, and floor burns than I can count).

As I was taking class today, I thought about how exhilarating dance is for me sometimes. Even just in a simple technique class, as you move you often get a sense of being a part of something grand and beautiful. You aren't just sitting back and taking life as it comes to you, you are actively creating and experiencing things in a very visceral, tangible way. There's something transcendent in it that connects me to God and to people in a way I can't quite describe.

Anyway.....I'll miss it.

with the end(beginning?) in sight

This week a friend chided me for never writing on this blog. "It's like once every two weeks!" she scolded (in the sweetest way possible), "So girl, you gotta get on that!"

Well, perhaps when I am no longer writing academic papers, I will write for fun again. And my goodness, that will be in ONE WEEK. I'm still pretty much in shock. One week of classes left in my college career. I am tempted to quote Lord of the Rings, "How did it come to this, here at the end of all things?"....but I would not treat LOTR in a joking manner.

Oh, and can I tell you the subject of my final college paper? Analyzing a poem about bestiality. Why, prof, why?

In lieu of my own writing, I will pass along a couple of things I discovered this week that you should discover too:
1) http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/ This site is hilarious. It's just pictures of grotesquely unhealthy food. Some will make you want to hurl, but at least a few just made me hungry. And quite a few involve some combination of bacon and chocolate (genius, if you ask me). Scroll through to at least page 4 to see some real gems like "The Bacon-copia" or the deep fried beer cupcakes. I kid you not.

2) If you're looking for some cute, lighthearted music---> Pomplamoose! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xMCNmUaGko) You might have heard this song in a commercial, but the duo has some great covers of some current radio hits as well that are pretty fun (i.e. Telephone, Single Ladies). Check it out!

Free Coffee!

If you are an addict like me (or even someone who mildly enjoys the delicious substance known as coffee), you should know that Starbucks is offering a free cup of their magical brew to anyone who brings in a reusable travel mug tomorrow (April 15th). I plan to be there bright and early before the start of my four back-to-back Thursday classes....yeeehaw!

my (disgusted) laugh for the day

A quote from an ABC Nightline interview airing this week with "evangelist" Joyce Meyer (my apologies for sarcasm if you happen to admire this woman for some reason):

Nightline: So if Jesus were here, he'd have a corporate jet?

Meyer: He might today, they weren't available then.

I should note Joyce is also publishing her 80th book this week, titled (I kid you not) Eat the Cookie, Buy the Shoes. Dear Ms. Meyer, do you know how many people in the world would love to just eat a piece of bread and have a simple pair of flip flops to protect the soles of their feet, and instead you want to publish a whole book encouraging American Christians to indulge themselves? Do you know how many people you could feed and clothe with the money you used for your mansion, multiple private jets, and face lift?

Oh, and on the subject of her recent plastic surgery, she said that Jesus would want her to look her absolute best as she presented the gospel. Really, Joyce, really?

One Week After Easter

One week after Jesus appeared to the rest of the disciples, he appeared again to Thomas. One week. How long must that week have felt for the one who struggled with doubt? How long do the weeks and months and years feel in our lives feel when we just long for Him to show up?

Recently I've watched several of my friends going through seasons of immense pain. Some struggle to believe God is good, others to believe He's powerful, others that He exists at all. My heart feels so burdened in the midst of all of it and sometimes I don't know how to offer comfort. Sometimes I just want comfort myself. Mostly I just try to listen.

Someone asked recently if I would still be a Christian if the whole thing were false, if it were all a man-made sham and Jesus was a fluke. I think there have been times in my life when I would have said yes, when I would have felt that the Christian life was somehow worthwhile and beautiful regardless of its truth.

I can't bring myself to say that anymore. I have to agree with Paul when he writes: " If Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins... If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied."

I believe in the resurrection like I believe in oxygen or water or food. I believe it because if I have hoped in Christ for this life only, it is a sad and desperate life indeed. This world can be a awful, nasty, brutish place. Life is horribly unfair and unjust and it makes me weep for the people I love who have suffered so unfairly. I believe in a resurrection that not only ushers in a hope for tomorrow, but an eternal life that begins NOW, that invades the ugliness and horror of humanity in this very moment on earth. Abundant life, joy, and hope are offered to us now in the midst of the pain and darkness. They co-exist--they don't cancel each other out. Not yet.

Last Sunday my pastor highlighted this part of the Easter story which I have often overlooked:
"Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”

“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

“Woman,” he said, “why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”

Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!”

It hit me like a brick...."Woman,why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?" She had Jesus on one side, angels on another, and she was still searching. I also love that the moment she did recognize him was at the sound of her own name. "Mary." I wish I could have heard his voice as he said that and watched her face dawn with ecstatic recognition and utter shock.

Here's a John Updike poem that speaks to me powerfully about the resurrection:

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.