The Flight of the Harmonious Stride

Maxim Trankov and Tatiana Volosozhar performed their short program in team figure skating last night and it

Photo by zhem_chug at FlickrCommons

goes without saying that they were magnificent.

In any display of grand competence, I am always overwhelmed by how the performer makes what is so very difficult look effortless.  Last night’s performance was such an example.

Watching them work in tandem minds me of how much more difficult it is to work together than alone.  I don’t know how tall they each are, but she only comes to his shoulder, which suggests as much difference in the length of their respective legs, which suggests how very much they must both work – she stretching beyond her limits, he holding back, to match each other skate for skate, turn for turn.

Matching pace, each to the other, is no easy thing in any endeavor: marriage, friendship, teacher-student, dancing, skating, walking side by side – all require an awareness of the other, an ability to slow down or speed up beyond one’s own normal pace of life in order to operate in tandem with another.

It invites the pondering of who do we have to alter our pace for and the recognition that in that altered pace may well lie our best flying.

Sometimes we just have to slow down for someone else.  We get that.  When our kids are little, we’re spending a whole lot of time in first gear, walking more slowly, matching our pace to theirs, speaking more simply, explaining along the way.

And whatever our life’s work, there will be times when we have to match our pace to another less knowledgeable or experienced, showing them the way, pointing forward so they can see what we already know to be there.

And there will be times when someone else will do that for us.

There is a cost to the self in this matching of pace, of one’s own internal rhythms to another’s.

But when it works, oh, how glorious it is, for there be dancing in our flying and harmony to the universe.

Thresholds

threshold n.  1: the plank, stone, or piece of timber that lies under a door : sill.  2a : gate, door.  b (1) : end, boundary; specifically : the end of a runway (2) : the place or point of entering or beginning : outset Merriam Webster

The beginning of a new year, any new year, is really quite arbitrary as measures go: this is a new year simply because we’ve agreed it is.

That said, there is, nevertheless, a sense of pondering, of considering, of weighing, that happens as one year ends and a new year begins.  Maybe it’s a simple by-product of sentience, this taking stock process.

Whenever I consider thresholds, my mind travels back to when I learned that a grandchild can be a kindred spirit.  It was a discovery moment.

Just old enough to walk on his own confidence, so maybe 18-20 months or so, I had grandson Rowen in tow one day ducking into the church for some work-related thing or another.

Entering from a back hallway into the sanctuary, Rowen experienced one of the joys of this particular worship space: perfect acoustics.

Babbling along in those softly indistinguishable sounds babies make before going verbal on us, he walked behind me, carrying his sing-song along with him.

Two steps into the sanctuary, he came to a sudden stop.

He raised his voice, babbled and listened intently.

He did that baby side-canter wobble/walk back out into the hallway, babbled a bit; came back in – babbled a bit; and repeated the process a few times, with utter delight on his face.

Baptistry in Pisa, Italy, where the acoustics
make a tenor sound like a cherubic choir

Rowen had crossed the threshold from the ordinary to the extraordinary in a few baby steps, and because of the gifts of sound and hearing and recognition, was able to know it in an instant.

Watching his discovery that day was a joy-filled thrill for me as well, as child and gran jumped back and forth over the threshold, hearing the noise of our happiness magnified by the near-perfect engineering surrounding us.

Thresholds can be drug places, as one figuratively or literally drags or is drug across.  They can be the place where pain begins.  They can be the boundary place.  And they can be the place where song unfurls, first as discovered sound, moving into its own symphony of filled space.

May this moment be a threshold to your song unfurled, 

echoing into perfect harmony in the ears of all you love.