The Glorious Dance

I bought a digital keyboard around 10 years ago. For those in the know, it's a Kurzweil PC-88mx. I still don't know what 90% of the keyboard buttons do. There's nothing like a little technology to reveal my ignorance and bring me down to size.

I recently found the buttons that play a demonstration of the keyboard's capabilities by playing music in different voices and modes. My daughter, Charlotte, who is 7 years old and learning the piano, asked how I made the piano play that song.

In hindsight, I should have feigned technological ignorance again. Now, at this moment, I am listening to a song that I'm pretty sure was a part of Disney's Main Street Electrical Parade for about the 45th time since I got home 20 minutes ago.

As much as I am growing to hate that Kurzweil (time will hopefully fade out the distaste), I am blessed to be able to watch the energetic joy of these little girls whom I call my own. They dance and dance and dance, completely oblivious to the fact that they received their father's "white man" gene, which renders one's legs completely insensitive to rhythm. It's a genetic disease. I've never even seen my father try to dance...and I'm not sure that I want to. But, in spite of the epileptic motions that my daughters consider as graceful as the most beautiful ballerina, I am enthralled at their joy.

I wish I had that joy. To be able to be completely unaware of myself and how I appear, just to dance in the glory of the music. I guess that I am more a product of my culture than I know. Lowered expectations and my failure of even those has hardened me to a sense of hope. What I know in my head, a lot like understanding music theory and notation, cannot replace the simple joy of the dance. It's not as if joy has completely moved out, but cynicism has moved its furniture into the living room.

It's time for another eviction. A gaze again at the great Musician. To hear the genius of grace and the glory of the gospel symphony, where God's mercy counterpoints God's holiness at the cross. I need to dance again, to feel the gospel move my soul to joyful, if not graceful, movement.

Holy Spirit, work your magic upon the lyre of my heart and set my soul to dancing, completely oblivious to how I appear, lost in the wonder of the music of your gracious love.