When angels dance
"Do you think that's what angels look like when they dance?" my mom asked me today as we admired the stunning clouds whisp together and out again, slowly shifting shapes above us as the world turns and we sit quietly in our beach chairs watching time float right on by. "Most definitely," I replied with confidence as I gazed above just wondering how spectacular Heaven must truly be with so much beauty jam-packed here on earth. If only we could approach our journey to the unknown like another new chapter in our extraordinary lives. Considering death like we would a trip around the world, no idea what to expect but full of wonder, excitement and joyful anticipation all the same.
Sure the "what if" questions may add fear, but is there anything great that doesn't first scare the crap out of you? Every first is full of fear... A first day of school, first day of work, first date, first leap of faith. There's fear in flying to that new destination you've never been to before or seeing those two little lines on a stick that mean a new life is being created.
Isn't fear really nothing more than that part of us which allows us to feel at all?
It wakes us up to what matters. What's special. What we cherish and what's worth getting up and going out for.
Fear demands us to put our faith into something, and that something determines our outlook. Sadly enough, sometimes fear takes us to the depths of hell when it does have is way. When the worst of our imagination becomes our present moment, that's when fear gets to say I told you so. But even there, all it takes is a little mustard seed of faith, and fear begins to dissipate. After all, fear is nothing more than the bully of our emotions. It talks a big talk, but once you stand up to it, it generally leaves you alone. Or better yet, leaves you appreciative. And while you might not always feel like you have the strength to fight fear, the beauty is that you really don't have to. The well in which our faith is stored is both absolute and infinite, and that makes it possible to just see fear for what it is, nothing more, nothing less.
Thinking through all of the endless possibilities of what could really happen on that next journey of demise, coupled with our own life experiences, we have to start to question why fear gets such a leading role in accepting death anyway. When we think about all the creative ways we are able to see love and feel love and give love -- in the here and now -- how is it rational to think that there isn't anything but love on the other side of life? Waiting there patiently for us, saying hi, here I am, in all my glory, I've been here all along.
Oh how He loves us. Forget about the pronoun for a minute and just think about what that means as you look around. The proof is everywhere. It's in the magesty of a mountain range or the vastness of an ocean. It's in that moment when you lock eyes with someone you adore deeply and feel that pinge in your chest. It's in the joy and innocence of a child's laugh or the tender squeeze of a friend's hand. However you define it, we undeniably feel it. So why not surrender to it? Let it have its way with you. Delight in it. Chase it. Let it strengthen your faith in genuine goodness and what is pure. And what is LOVE and then with your whole heart, watch all the ways it continues to reveals itself to you.
Whether we like it or not, the reality of life is that we are all on our way to meet death, and none of us can control when we'll get there. So why not let fear teach us instead of frighten us? Let it remind us of how precious we are... Just to breathe. Just to be.
This weekend I heard Oprah ask a man what he thought the purpose of the human experience is, and to me the answer came easy. I said it aloud before he even could... "to learn to love" (he added and to be free). When we figure out how to do that, either by choice or by death, we finally get that we, too, are love, made with love, by love, for love. And that love is what I believe makes angels dance, leaving clouds of grace as they twirl across the sky.
