Do you dance in your kitchen?

I have a confession for you.

When the day runs long, I turn on pop music. Not to make a clever, ironic and ultimately sophisticated statement about the banality of repetitive chord progression, or the blank pages of lyrics. Not to lament my 10 hour day or to escape thinking about things, to make my own mind void.

Nope, I turn it on because there are moments when I must remember that dancing in your kitchen and laughing are important parts of choosing the joyful life.

I thought about blogging today about Trinity Sunday, and the beautiful strong Name of the Trinity. What does it mean to bind yourself to that name? What is the mystery of Trinity, of Three and One?

But if this life is about growing in joy, binding myself to Him means remembering out loud the ways that He teaches me to love this world. And today I want to share a little bit of that with you.

We dance in the kitchen. Me, Mom, the brothers and sister when she's home, even Dad on occasion. We bump into chairs and into our table, we spin around and glasses of water shake precariously as the floorboards quake. The sun sneaks in through the windows, the breeze through the hallway. The music blasts from my laptop and it's too catchy not to dance.

It starts in our shoulders, the uncontrollable bopping to the beat, and then we are on our feet, sneakers and hot pink shoes and sandals. and our hands are in the air and we are snapping fingers and jumping up and down. And we sing the wrong lyrics or no lyrics, and it's just us and the laughter beaming from one person to another. And we are never embarrassed (well, almost never), because the music is in our veins and we move in spite of ourselves and all those pesky insecurities.

How can this be? Because when the world presents itself to us, all full of mess and glory, when we watch water beads on the rhododendron petals, when we share stories over cupcakes and tea, when we try new recipes on the grill and offer to buy groceries for our parents - we can choose to make that the heartbeat of our lives. Those don't have to be isolated moments of love in a story of despair. We don't have to live a lamentation punctuated by joy: we could live hope tempered with sorrow, love softened and deepened by what is difficult. But the story we tell could spell joy and love and laughter in bigger letters.

It's not easy. I feel like I fight the temptation to lament often these days. I feel like the vortex of dramatic despair is wide and beckons, calls out a wild call that my troubles are insolvable, and my heart is wounded, and my fears are going to be realized, and all my hopes will be disappointed.


But there is a fidgety and joyful person inside me, and she wants to dance in her kitchen and sing loudly in her car and let her feet carry her through streets and past barking dogs on long runs. This Hilary doesn't have patience for wallowing in what is difficult. She wants to look foolish and laugh and beam back the joy that surrounds us all every moment.

So I ask you: is your fidgety joyful person aching to dance in your kitchen? Have you given them a chance to let loose, shaken off the weight of work this week, uncertainty about love and future and departure, and hit "Play" on the cheesiest pop music you can find? This person, too, is you. You are and can be this full of laughter and your cheeks can ache and your stomach hurt and the smile leap off your face and into our hearts.

(Mandie Sodoma, Sindisiwe Photography)

Here is your assignment: wherever you are, reading this, listen to the following, and dance your heart out:

1. Tonight, Tonight - Hot Chelle Rae
2. Party Rock Anthem ft. Lauren Bennett, Goon Rock  - LMFAO
3. Say Hey (I Love You) - Michael Franti & Spearhead
4. Celui - Colonel Reyel
5. Alors, On Danse - Stromaë

And imagine me dancing my heart out with you!

Love,
Hilary

Home (A five minute post)

It's that time - when we throw caution to the writing winds and write, just five minutes free and clear, into the ocean of words. Join us, won't you? The Gypsy Mama hosts - and this week it's about "home."

Let me whisper a secret to you: I make homes in my heart for the people I meet, and there is a carving out of space and the decorating of the room, painting it bright colors, letting light and sunshine and cool summer breezes through. I want my heart to be filled with homes for the surprising, the challenging, the questions that lurk and settle and that kick up dust.

Home is a word for what our hearts do for each other - how we move mountains and rivers like chess pieces, how we clear paths through the murkiness and the fog, how we speak through tin can telephones the truth and the goodness and the beauty. Home is how we love each other, and how we journey through life, and more than anything how we manage to leave bits of ourselves in the soil of other people's hearts.

Home is a word for all the places I carry inside me: sun-soaked Italy, my gurgling river in England, the whisper of French lavender, the hope and ache of the Southern veranda overlooking hazy blue North Carolina mountains, the cornfields in Gilead, Iowa, and the mysterious places between, and all of the people who I reach out my hands to, wherever you are, who hold pieces of me as well. You are all home. ee cummings is right: i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart).

Love,
Hilary

How wonderful life is (I sing a little Elton John)

"I know it's not much, but it's the best I can do, my gift is my song, and this one's for you... I hope you don't mind, I hope you don't mind,  that I put down in words, how wonderful life is, while you're in the world..."

The song is cheesy. I thought that when I first heard it at Waring, while watching the premiere of "Teacher's Wing" (courtesy of the incredible Tim Bakland and his wild imagination and talent). I think it's cheesy now.

But maybe cheesy is just truth spoken plainly instead of draped with elegant phrases. Maybe cheesy is a way of admitting that we are uncomfortably humbled by the clarity, the precision, the... true-ness of it. I think Elton John is cheesy for writing that life is more wonderful because she (whoever she is) is in the world, but perhaps that's because truth spoken without metaphors and analogies, no adjectives, just noun sitting neatly next to verb... it makes me nervous. You can't forget the idea for the words, and the truth is not slant, just true...

Ahem, so I sing a little Elton John to you today, wherever you may be reading this, between sips of latte or squinting at your iPhone, in a hard place or a tired place or a sunshine place or a laughter place. I'm singing "Your Song" to you as I type the non-slant truth over the waves of electrons and pixels and unfathomable technology to wherever you happen to be.

Verse 1:

I went running yesterday, my head so full of frustrated that I found myself whispering over and over in the first ten minutes, "I just can't do it, I can't do it, I don't have time. I don't have TIME!" And it took a mile before I had calmed my heart back into being a muscle for a while, working in tandem with my hamstrings and my feet. And I was headed home, home to that awful sinking feeling - you know the one? - of "I can't. I can't." But then, at that very moment, the sun peeked out from a cloud and the breeze picked up my face and shook me and the smells of motor oil and freshly cut grass and hamburgers grilling across the street wafted over me. How wonderful life is.

Verse 2:

When I see your comments on my posts, I want to laugh and jump up and down and possibly cry, but mostly laugh. How did it ever happen that my words, wandering through cyberspace, found you? And that you read and you take the time to tell me that you appreciate, that you hear me, that your listening ears have caught a glimpse or two of something true and even beautiful over here? Thank you, thank you, thank you. Having you here, knowing you took the time to say hello, that you took the time to read, makes all the difference in the world. How wonderful life is (while you're in the world).

Verse 3:

I know it might not be easy right now. Maybe you are so tired you could fall asleep, sponge in hand, at the kitchen counter. Maybe you wish for a love not yet realized. Maybe you wonder if you're worth it. Maybe you see the path in front of you disappearing into a foggy unknown - what the heck am I supposed to do NOW? But I promise that God's blessings are good in every single direction. They stretch over you, too, even when you can't see them. And when you think, "How can that bless me too? Doesn't it just bring me hurt? Doesn't it just promise rocky terrain and broken hearts?" I've thought that too. But His good is infinitely good. And He does not forget you when He blesses others, when you watch friends find love you can't seem to find, when people move in and out of your life, when you aren't getting the job and the acceptance letter to graduate school that everyone else seems to get. Trust me. His blessing moves in your life even now - how wonderful life is, even when we can't see it.

Verse 4:

Now just picture me, singing this to you, laughing and rejoicing that you are YOU, that He made someone so beautiful, so thoughtful, someone who can write like you, who can listen, sing, think, solve problems, write papers, cook, dance, and love like you do?

(Mandie Sodoma)

And you can tell everybody this is your song
It may be quite simple but now that it's done
I hope you don't mind
I hope you don't mind that I put down in wordsHow wonderful life is while you're in the world


Love,
Hilary