Prompt: Dancing

This round of A-U's Writing Prompt Contest was dancing, and this is my slightly random-ish entry. I'm not sure what I think of it. Comments and criticism are welcome :)

Heart of Fire

I sit on the outer edges of the bonfire, watching them dance.

I used to love Midsummer’s Eve. Nothing but play in the day, and in the night, dancing until your knees are weak. I used to be the best dancer of them all.

That was before the accident. I can remember, like a horrible dream, the day I knew I would never dance again. Next I remember the Midsummer’s Eve, a year ago, to which I hobbled on crutches – wooden legs that are no use for dancing - and tried to whirl around the blaze, tried to play the part of a dancer. I didn’t miss the looks of pity, not one. What a tragedy, they whispered behind their hands. Doesn’t she know she’s crippled? Why does she try?

And others answered: She used to be the best, didn’t you know?

After that night, I never tried again. The first thundershower in which I did not leap to the sky with my exultation and cavort with the storm was a month later. I sat at the window and watched lightning shatter the sky into millions of pieces, while thunder scattered them to the four winds. But the next day, the sky was miraculously whole again. My legs weren’t.

There was once. Once I escaped to the meadow and capered through the long grass as best as I knew how. That dance was more a hobble than a jig, but who could know? It was only me, and my heart knew how to dance, even if my legs were forever deaf to its pleas. There, I could fall and lie under the sun in the soft grass and pretend, if only for moments, that I was whole and free and happy. It was always worse, dragging myself home after that, but who in this world will not seize a minute of happiness over an hour of pain?

It gave me hope, for a while, to stretch my hands to the sky and tell it that I could dance, because it did not judge. But the little boys that hid in the bushes judged. Their titters told me what I thought, and their shrill voices told me, even across the meadow, what they saw. She looks like a frog, or a monkey. My mama said she’s crazy, and her mind went when her legs did.

How soon they forgot. And how soon, I knew, they would forget again. Since then I have never danced. If they can forget, why can I not? I asked myself. I will forget. Perhaps I will learn to spin or sew or work a loom, and when I see dancing, my heart will have forgotten, and so it will not twist in my breast like the tortured thing it is. Then there will be no whispers behind hands.

Did it work? No. Because here I sit, staring past wild silhouettes into a fire that beckons my spirit to join it in its darts and leaps of reckless abandon; but my spirit must overcome my body, and my body is too great a weight for it to carry. It wilts like the flowers in the meadow, and with it I wilt, too. This time, I try not to hear what they say behind their hands, but I know its hurt nonetheless. Every day I hear the same from my trapped soul, which beats itself senseless against bars – wooden bars like the legs that cannot dance – and falls, only to awake knowing that it must do the same again. Why won’t she get up again and keep going? We all know loss. This is no different.

Mayhap it isn’t. Mayhap I am only weak. But does a bird burrow like a mole because it loses its wings? Does a fish turn to building nests in trees because its fins fail? Does a heart cease its dancing because its body cannot carry it?

This Midsummer’s Eve, I can feel the flames that kindle in my breast. For a year, they were ashes like a phoenix’s death. But every phoenix is born again. Every heart must again catch the spark that once made it blaze.

Is there talking behind hands, hands that have no hearts? I don’t know. What do they say about me, the girl whose legs will not dance, but whose crutches will? I don’t care. Which is the worse – wooden legs, or no legs at all? The fire leaps and dances with wood.

In the end, it doesn’t matter. Because in the end, all that is left is my heart.

And my heart needs no legs to dance.

YC Alberta 2008 - Passion: recap of Friday night

Composed of speakers, concerts, seventeen thousand youth from across Canada, Rexall Place, the wave, tears, very large sandwiches, sore necks from rocking out during concerts, losing your voice, losing your hearing, and above all discovering that our God really IS an awesome God.

Friday, May 23
8:00 pm - YC Alberta kicks off. Dark stadium full of wired youth, and a video to start us off. The theme this year was passion - renewing our passion for sharing Christ and recommitting our lives to God.

Next was the start of our first General Session, which is all 17000 youth in the stadium, and worship led by Tim Hughes, who came all the way from London, England. He's pretty prolific, and has won awards for what (to quote my YC booklet) is 'arguably the biggest modern worship album ever, Here I Am To Worship'. In my personal opinion, he's very good at what he does, and he picked some perfect songs. You can't really have complicated stuff when you have to lead 17000 people in singing.

The speaker for Friday evening was John Bevere. I don't have all of his message in my notes, particularly the end, which was much more reflective than it was intellectual. From what I do have, his basic message was that friendship with God is reserved for those who fear Him. This statement struck me as incongruous, at first, but he did go into it more in-depth. To fear God does not mean to be scared of God. While He loves us with an everlasting love, He is - as one of the later speakers put it, I think - both King and Daddy. To fear God is to regard Him as holy and to hold Him in very high reverence. God will not allow His presence to be felt in a place where He is not highly venerated. The two men in the Old Testament regarded as friends of God were Abraham and Moses. God shared His secrets with them. But they were friends of God not only because God drew near to them, but because they drew near to God. God doesn't force us to draw near, but however close you are to Him, He'll be that close to you. We determine how close we are. Our goal as Christians should be to be friends of God.

10:00 pm - Skillet concert. For anyone who's not familiar with Skillet, they're compared in my booklet to Led Zeppelin. They've been around for a while, and they also are very good at what they do. I stayed for about the first three songs of this concert - I'd never been to a rock concert that big before (actually, I think this weekend included my first three actual concerts ever) and I couldn't handle the volume level or the crazy rate at which the lights were going. Deaf and blind, I tell you. I think that if they hadn't burst in with Skillet the first night and done maybe Hawk Nelson or Newsboys instead, I might have been able to ease into it, but it was a bit of a sensory overload. The sound in Rexall is also a bit fuzzy - I mean, it's a hockey arena. Not exactly built with excellent acoustics. Anyway, the many fans of Skillet enjoyed their appearance very much, and I wandered around outside until the concert was done.

11:00, evening conclusion. Slept like a rock Friday night. I am an introvert, yes. I adjusted better the next day.

(I was hoping to do this all in one post but it doesn't look like happening. Hopefully I have Saturday and Sunday up soon)

Please pray

Link

To paraphrase, the youngest daughter of Steven Curtis Chapman, who is a Christian singer/songwriter and Grammy-winning artist, was killed in a car accident on Wednesday. She was five years old. Please keep them in your prayers.

Clicky the egg, please!

I didn't know that piano could make you hungry?

Well, it can, because I just spent 65 minutes on the piano and I'm going back to do another 30 as soon as I recover, and while I did eat breakfast I'm definitely ravenously hungry. Maybe moving your fingers is better exercise than I thought. Which reminds me of what's really a horrible quote:

[Me practicing while siblings are playing a very loud game with a ball directly behind me]
Me: Guys, can you PLEASE be quiet?! I'm trying to concentrate!
Brother: *blinks* How do you need to concentrate? You're just moving your fingers?

Yes, I did piano for ten years to learn how to move my fingers. Right.

To-Dos for today include tossing some stuff in a backpack cause I get to visit my grandparents today and tomorrow (YAY), catching up on math, and then finishing the various graphics I've agreed to do, including awards for a recent contest (four more to go), a Jars of Clay banner, and a banner from the first scene of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. I have these weird spurts where I like to make graphics, so I figure I might as well go with it.

This is a week of season finales, incidentally. House and Bones were both on Monday, the two-hour finale of NCIS was last night (though I haven't watched it yet) and American Idol is ending this evening, THANK GOODNESS. It is a little depressing, though, how there won't be anything interesting to watch over the summer.

While I'm at it, a couple interesting links for anyone who happens to be reading and has some spare time on their hands:

Don't Panic, a superbly well done fanfic about a modern-day young woman who gets dropped into Middle-Earth, except instead of instantly falling madly in love with Aragorn, dueling Sauron and becoming the worst Mary-Sue to ever walk the earth, she finds that medieval life isn't all it's cracked up to be, and has to learn Sindarin in order to communicate with anyone. It's really good, trust me, and it has a sequel called "Okay, NOW Panic!"

Weird Canadian Place Names. I found this because Jamie and I were discussing it, and there are some really odd ones in there - the best being Ochiichagwebabigoining in Ontario. I kid you not.

As an afterthought, I'm considering switching my blog over to somewhere else; I'm finding Blogger a bit boring. Any suggestions?

Weather: Rainy.

Melda