Like with love, it begins with yourself.
And the music carries me. Cresting, crashing, falling down. Your hands are in my back pockets. Our belt buckles click together. Yours is a wolf. Mine is a star. You murmur, not a whisper, something more certain, like the confidence in your eyes: “I know where we can go.”
The hall is long and dark and narrow. Rebirth. Reborn as someone else. Someone no one here knows. An eight hour flight was never so worth it. You turn and smooth down my Silence = Death t-shirt. “It suits you,” you say somewhere left of my ear. You push my hair over my shoulder. I just look at you. You know my answer.
We turn onto the dance floor. Blackness in the middle of the Sabbath day. Shot in time with the beat with red, blue, green, gold. So many have come to worship this way. Someone... several someones are shouting call and response to the live DJ. I count a few rosaries but mostly the accessories of the faith glow neon or glint gold. Hm. Grrl... you sure know how to find a club. And you know it. You walk backwards, away from me, melting into the crowd, disappearing. You mouth, “Told ya... *Angel*....” Your dark hair braided into three dozen braids on the flight here falls forward, hiding eyes that burn.
We are not here together.
I am alone. I am perfect. I am with my Lord. I move into the crowd, arms up, boots stomping, already dancing.
Tokyo. Not today. Not NYC like now. It was Tokyo and I was running away from myself. Oh, dear Lord. *So* not like now. I just wanted to get away from LA. From the looks I found myself getting and receiving. From the words that all my “friends” were squinting and shaking their heads at me about. It was the first and last time I joined a Bible study group. Oh Christ... I had no idea how much damage it would do, it did, until years after the fact. Those tiny minds undid years of truths. Just reached into my heart....
Tokyo. It was cold. The club was hot. The cover was high. The floor was packed. The music was hard techno pop, raging beat, shotgun lyrics. I was there fifteen minutes when a dancer (boy? grrl?) offered me a tab and I considered it for the first time in my life. I was running so hard, so far, so fast. I wanted to lose myself... this waking up self. I said no. Thank you, God.
I danced. I danced and cried and prayed. At some point there was a pair of deep brown eyes, short spiked black hair frosted neon blue. There were hands unbuttoning my crisp white button up. The white tails fluttered at my hips, spun out behind me, brushing black leather pants. Angel wings. “Angel...” a whisper. I danced.
Lord...
I didn't ask for this.
I didn't look for this.
Slumbering in my chest.
It kills me to deny it.
It closes me down.
It spins me inward.
I want to open my arms.
Give me the courage.
Open my eyes.
Touch me.
I am alone.
Just you.
Just me.
Touch me.
Take me.
“You talk about Christ like a lover.”
“He is.”
“You talk about making love like prayer.”
“It is.”
“You see Him differently than I do.”
“Absolutely... PTL.”
Freezing Rain. Cherry Blossoms. On the Speedway. Move. Blast My Desire. Around the World. World's End. My Sweetest Nightmare. Dogfight. Hard dance songs. Techno crash. I imagine on a global stage, Terrapyres dance to music like this. Maybe they had their origins that night. That idea of angels finding Christ on the dance floor, or swimming in beat and bass line and searing vocals. Music is my blood and baptism. I find Christ beneath, behind, inside the music far more often than I find Him in the hollow words of any man. Here is primal and my Christ is primal.
Tokyo. I cried, “Show me!” Take me. Touch me. I will do the work. I will do the work. I. Will. Do. The. Work.
And He did. He reached down and touched me. Took my heart, that sheltered little grrl who was welding steel around herself, and with the strength of only my Lord, He shattered the armor and opened my heart to myself. I was alone. On that dance floor, in the world, I was alone. Just Him. Just me.
I don't need anyone else to know who I am.
And I did the work. First the body and then the mind. I gained fifteen pounds of muscle (which I needed). I gained an inch of height (by standing up straight). I walked five miles five times a week. I planted a garden, my hands in rich soil like life. I boxed three times a week, forty-five minutes hard.
I changed me. I celebrated Christ in me. I would not waste this gift, not this body, not one heartbeat, not one day. No motivator but my faith. I need no guide other than my Lord in my heart, in my ear, walking at my side.
And I did the work. Second the mind. I read a new book every week. Nonfiction. Theory. Fiction. Raw. Real. I opened my eyes to my world, to my politics, to my reality. I broke open everything I thought I knew. I wrote. Journaling first because that's what chicks do, and then blogging, cuz that's what everyone does, and then I pushed and Christ pushed back and I was writing to touch hearts and save souls. And Mardi Gras 3000 crested like a dream.
The music is in my bones now. Nothing quite like NYC clubs on the Sabbath. I am sure of myself when I walk out of man's world and into God's world. I could have gone mountain climbing. I could have scaled a rock. I could have chartered a boat and gone diving. I could have walked into any bar and picked a fight LOL! But the view here is so much nicer.
It was Tokyo and the rain was cold. It was Tokyo and I had certainly gone to the ends of the Earth to escape something that I carried within me. I felt branded...
...and now I feel branded. Marked forever. Touched by the flame of God. This brand is His mark. I accept my nature. I embrace who I am and what that means and what I must do. Word of God has spoken. And this angel dances. Sweet Christ, I'm dancing.
Remind me, Lord.
Of who I am.
Don't allow me
to run to hide
to waste the breath
you have given me.
Knock me down
so that I remember
how to stand back up.
I found myself
so as not to be lost.
You are my shepherd.
No one else.
I am
standing
dancing.
Warrior, heal thy self.
Less than 21,000 genomes make up every single living creature on this only green world. The same 21,000 genomes. Human beings do not have a single unique genome. Period. As in nature so in man. As in nature so in God. Stop just reading it, over and over again, and start believing it. Start feeling it. Start breathing it.
Start preaching it.
We are all the same 21,000 words written into just less than seven billion books. We are all the same words... each telling a different story.
Are you sharing your story?
EJ
