getting over the importance

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In the predawn light, within the etched nakedness of the winter branches outside the porch, there are plump-breasted blobs here and there. Like notes along a musical staff, their plumpness brings promise and life to the trees that have simply been a reminder of winter's stillness. Besides the sparrows I can identify by silhouette, there are crows somewhere in the distance announcing their noisy intentions. And further away, at a nearby upscale farm, a rooster makes his spring debut -- crowing as I have not heard him all winter long.

In Hinduism, the three gods, Brahma, Vishnu and Siva, play the music of this life. Brahma, the creator; Vishnu, the preserver; Siva, the destroyer. It all sounds important when put in a religious context, much as it might sound important if someone were to wax lyrical about the "sanctity of life."

And maybe that is one of the most important aspects of spiritual endeavor -- to work through the sense of importance, to get over yourself, and, in the end, to enjoy yourself. Where there is music, isn't it time to dance?

Across the street, once-pristine heaps of snow are now blackened along their peaks. The warmth destroys what the cold created and preserved. The birds play their role and sing us into the dawn and into the spring. As the day destroys the night, so the night creates the day and the interplay is 'important' in our minds which long to preserve the importance of it all by writing it down, like notes along some musical staff...when all the time it is just music and an invitation to the dance.

To call creation, preservation and destruction a "dance" is too much -- too much like separating the beautiful woman from the handsome man when what soars the heart is just the dance, just our very own dancing.

No one can create this dance, no one can preserve it and no one can destroy it. The music is just there, along the predawn branches or at some distant farm or among the dirtied snow peaks or sitting on the porch.

No one can create this dance, no one can preserve it and no one can destroy it.

But there is dancing.

Dancing is not "important."

Dancing, don't you think, is just fun.
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