you know how when...

A new "month" started 4 days ago... and I seem to be avoiding it.  I didn't forget, but I let myself pretend that I had.  It's the last one in this project and that seems like kind of a big deal.  So, I'll get there... but not tonight.  Tonight, let's just stick with what I already wrote.

You know how when you have an idea to make (draw, paint, build, cook, etc) something and you start to and it doesn't look (smell, taste, feel, etc) like it did in your head?  That phenomena used to stop me, and I've learned in my adulthood to push through that and get whatever I'm making either to the picture in my head or if that doesn't happen find a way to love it for what it turns out to be.  I've actually gotten quite adept at recognizing and appreciating the happy accident... almost enough to have mostly stopped forming ideas in my head of the way things will turn out to be before they get there.  Except...
...with dancing.  I don't dance.  It's not that I don't want to do it.  I have all sorts of dreamy, cinematic pictures in my head of dance numbers that I (and the folks around me) break into on cue at the most emotionally intense moments in my life...  but whether it's a chorus line to make a point or just bumping up against my love at a party the moving images in my head of what my body would be able to do with music aren't what actually comes out of my limbs.

And I don't push through it.  I don't keep trying to get to the picture.  Nor do I end up loving it for what it ends up being.  What's up with that?

random, unrelated picture of miracle leaf hovering in mid air...

One of the things we practice in MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) is walking meditation.  Which is essentially paying attention, on purpose, to walking.  Which can mean a whole lot of different things (thank goodness, if it was only one thing I don't think I would be able to tolerate doing it as often as we have) because there's a lot about walking to pay attention to.  Last week when I was paying attention to walking I was trying to pay attention to each individual movement and separate it from the one that came before and the one that came next (which is essentially impossible because they are completely interconnected, but still super interesting).  And besides eventually being able to recognize some very key steps in the process of walking that I had previously taken for granted...  I also witnessed tremendous gratitude for my body and what it does for me and how well it works...

and in the next moment, I noticed...  I am graceful.  I felt the way the movements of one foot, ankle, calf, knee, thigh, and hip pushed up and transferred my weight from one side to another in one long sweeping movement up the leg and the way the weight came down on the other side and settled into the other hip, thigh, knee, calf, ankle, and foot.  And that it repeated in a beautiful arc that didn't have a beginning or an end... and it was graceful.  I was graceful.  I always have been.

(I tell Devon about this and she says, in a very loving way using many different and varied words, I told you so)

So now... with all my body does for me I feel compelled to do right by it.  To do something that honors the grace and persistence and the unending service.  Guess what that thing probably is?  Dancing.  *sigh*