A lot!  As a person and as a Christian.  And as a mom.  You see, I have a daughter who competes and performs traditional Irish dance.  So St. Patrick’s Day is big for us.  Performances at least once a day this week – at the parade, at the public library, at retirement homes and the VA hospital.  Yesterday some of the dancers attended mass at a Catholic church downtown where the priest is Irish.  Their dance teacher sang The Lord’s Prayer in Gaelic.

Watching these dancers is transformative for me.  It takes every ounce of their concentration to execute the steps with precision.  They have to be aware of where the other dancers are and pay attention to their own feet and posture, keeping their hands tucked securely at their sides while they point their toes and jump and kick.  It takes about all the patience a parent can muster to get their dresses made, every skirt, cape, and sleeve hand-embroidered by a parent or grandparent or paid seamstress with the traditional Irish emblems.  Then the dresses are handed down when they are outgrown, until they are worn so thin they are coming apart.

The real beauty of all of this is that when those kids are dancing, it is about so much more than them.  They are connecting us to the history of a particular place across the world.  It is all about them and at the same time it is all about another group of people who came before them, developing a rich culture of music and dance.  Long before these dancers were born, there were people in the hills of Ireland working out these dances.  They taught them to their children, and they taught them to their children, and one of those children of children of children of children teaches those same steps to kids in Little Rock, Arkansas.  And when you watch them dance, you see the beauty of the dance itself and you also feel as if you’ve caught a glimpse of all those Irish dancers from “the old country.”

Take a look:

HERE

I love this bit of life that reminds us that we are smack in the middle of an old, old story.  We matter, just like those dancers matter.  It makes a difference when they put themselves into the dance, and spend time practicing and concentrating and making friendships with the other dancers.  The particulars of our lives matter, and it makes a difference when we work well and live well and love well.  And we also live in the context of a much larger picture, just like those dancers.  They are taking part in something that has been going on for a long, long time – and so are we.  As we work out who we are and what God is calling us to, as we go about trying to love our neighbors and ourselves, as we think and pray and work and rest and sing and dance and all those other things we do – we are stepping into that great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us.

What are the essential steps to which you are called to be faithful?  And how are you bringing your own God-given presence and style to those steps?