What do a Jewish wedding, Zorba the Greek, a pow-wow and a polka have in common?  Coming from four different cultures, they all carry a universal message: dance is at the heart of life.  We dance together boisterously and wildly to celebrate marriages, births, successes of all kinds.  We dance in community crooning lull-a-byes of comfort for losses.  We dance in intimate tight circles when we are afraid or lost.  We dance alone when the pain is too deep.  We dance with another wordless, without moving in our support.  

It was my last year of college and our English literature assignment was to see a movie and write an essay about the messages we received.  A girl friend and I chose “Zorba the Greek.” The music was infectious, Zorba was enchanting, the stories each of the characters brought to life were authentic and diverse.  As we rode the “L” above the streets of Chicago back to campus talking about the messages received, I was astounded to hear her take on the film.  My senses were saturated, hers were much less so.  At home for Christmas, I convinced my boyfriend that this was the best movie ever, so we went.  He offered yet another unique perspective! One film, many meanings.  I haven’t watched “Zorba the Greek” for years but I know that over time good literature reasserts itself into our consciousness.   A great story carries a timeless message that impacts each reader or viewer differently; it continues to reverberate long after the book is closed or the film ends.  The messages evolve over time as we do.  What we thought we knew then is either released when it no longer fits or deepens into our pool of wisdom.

“Zorba, why do you dance?” asked the young Englishman. Zorba’s answer was inclusive of all of the events of life; the joys as well as the sorrows that we encounter in a full life.  I was reminded of this theme of the movie over the past two weekends.

Last Saturday I wrapped and packed some family heirlooms to pass on to my granddaughter.  She is an Irish dancer in the manner of Michael Flattley and “River Dance.”  She and her friends have been learning and performing together for years, their movements fluid, precise and energetic.  These lovely and talented older girls now welcome in the new little girls, making them part of an ancient tradition, just as they were ushered in years ago.  It is beautiful to behold.  We, the community of parents and grandparents and friends join in their dance by clapping to support the rhythm, marveling at their rapidly moving feet, delighting in their youth and beauty and joy.  St. Patrick’s Day is the highlight of the year for Irish dancers. So on that weekend we all savored two days of celebration with our precious daughters.  The passing on of family treasures and traditions, the welcoming of younger ones into the rituals and celebrations, the weaving of life from generation to generation, the letting go and the picking up again; these were my thoughts as I watched the girls dance, as I wrapped and packed.  I was flooded with memories and with dreams of the future, simultaneously.

The final scene in "Zorba", when everything has changed and nothing has turned out the way the young Englishman imagined, he turns to Zorba and says, “Teach me to dance.”

And so it is that we dance through all that life brings to us. We dance alone and with others, wrapping the heirlooms of our stories to pass on, keeping some to open again many times, allowing the dances to move through us as they will. Knowing that the dances we received from our elders were precious and worthy, the stories were those they had received and wanted us to remember. Knowing the messages will change. Knowing they will be danced with new meanings by our children and their children. Knowing that true stories will survive. Knowing the dance by heart.

Living near the border between the US and Canada, having no TV, by choice, the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Co.) sends out the strongest signal on my radio band.  And so I have become an observer (far from an authority) of differences between Canada and the US.  I’ve noticed that many. . . 

Canadian news casters sensationalize less, report events with more detachment, seem to take a longer view spiced with maturity and absent of incessant editorializing and horrorizing.  Just the facts, Ma’am.

Canadian singers, songwriters, and composers seem to honor their craft, their art, their poetic sensibility; seem to approach the sharing of their lyrics and melodies as a sacred responsibility rather than the means to the end of fame and wealth.

Canadian artists - visual, literary, musical - who receive but a perfunctory shrug, if they are noticed at all in the States, are regarded as integral, woven into the fabric of the culture.

Indigenous voices are heard as they call us to account, reminding immigrants that wisdom resides in traditions and stories reaching back thousands of generations, married to place and to community.  Sustaining life appears to be a virtue rather than a liability.

One of Canada’s most beloved spokes persons, Leonard Cohen, has carried out his assignment for nearly 60  years – writing from the heart.  Never turning his back on our human frailties and our divine inheritance, he melds body and soul into one delicious, flawed and holy experience.  His poetic expression bears repeated listening.  His CD released in 2012, "Old Ideas", is deeply touching and carries the essence of his wisdom.  In the first song “Going Home”, God speaks about Leonard as “a poet and a shepherd, a lazy bastard living in a suit  . . . . he knows he’s really nothing but a brief elaboration of a tube.”

Some might question my wisdom/sanity in suggesting that Leonard Cohen is a representative of an Easter symbol.  After all he is a Jew, a Buddhist monk, a ladies man, a former host to drugs and depression, a familiar face from the heyday of the Chelsea Hotel.  And that is exactly why, to my mind, he is an excellent Easter representative.

“He’s really nothing but a brief elaboration of a tube.”  To reach that level of humility, that recognition of one’s place in the universe, of one’s insignificance, seems to come about through a well-lived life.  Maybe not an easy life or a privileged life or a morally pristine life; but a yeasty life, a questing life, a life of brilliant successes and equally brilliant failures.  Life, as we all discover, asks us to fully inhabit our shadows as well our sunlight, learning to embrace each side, lovingly.

For me this is the message of Easter, the holy union of human and divine.  Descending and ascending daily over the course of a lifetime.  Entering the tomb of death, emerging without the trappings that we wore.  Radiant. Authentic. Graced beyond belief.  

May the true blessings of Easter - love, joy, and new life - be yours in abundance!

I was five years old and morning kindergarten was the highlight of my day.  Our classroom was huge and bright with french doors along the entire south side of the room that lead to own private balcony. We had our own bathrooms, our own playground, an upright piano, child sized kitchen area, band instruments, cars and trucks, dolls and jump ropes and balls of all sizes, piles of books with wonderful pictures, and a whole room full of new friends.  Miss Harper was petite and kind and reminded me of my grandma.  In the afternoons at home I would line up chairs for my dolls and stuffed animals and my little brother and teach them all.  At five, my future vocation was obvious to me; I would be a teacher just like Miss Harper.   
   
Standing in my very first classroom of six and seven year olds on my very first day of teaching, I wondered if Miss Harper felt the way I did.  Loaded down with books, lesson plans, seating charts, attendance sheets and weekly schedules, I felt very adult-like and composed. The children quickly dismantled all that! Over the course of that year, I learned that teaching is so much more than delivering everything the books contain. I watched in fascination as the children progressed, their minds lively and curious, their eagerness to learn being a powerful catalyst. All I really had to do was ignite the spark, offer reassurance, provide resources – then step aside. Witnessing the miracle of children opening their hearts and minds to possibilities, being present to their joy and pride, their rapid growth, thrilled me.  

Over the years, the nature of my work and the settings changed but teaching in one form or another remained the common thread:

• tutoring adult refugees from SE Asia, east Europe, Africa and helping them to create a new life in freedom
  
• assisting communities and organizations to develop programs to empower the lives of children and families
  
• guiding clients to alternative solutions and modalities to address their health concerns
  
• serving as a spiritual guide to clients facing life challenges and searching deeply 
  
• training trainers, organizational leaders and boards of directors, healers, spiritual teachers and conflict mediators
  
• helping people to go within for answers to “who am I, why am I here, what is my life purpose?”
  

Through all these years and ways of teaching, I have been the learner.  My understanding of being a teacher has changed dramatically.  College prepared me to research and dispense information in a formulaic, structured way.  Life taught me to abandon constraints and open to possibilities.  The right “teachers” cross our paths in the form of another person, a book, a phrase from a song, a conversation overheard, a tragedy or an illness, a sunset, a bird on the wing.  The teacher within awakens to embrace the teaching and bring it to conscious awareness as an organic growing medium.  All that we need to know is within us.  And all that we know becomes the foundation and content of what we teach to ourselves and what we share with others. 

As you look back over your life, do you see this? What do you know today that is the same as what you knew years ago? What do you believe that is different?  What have you embraced as truth? What are you teaching yourself? What are you bringing to others?

The best teachers that I know say little, listen a lot and help me to know what I already know.  I believe that the truest teaching assignment we can take on is summarized in these words from A Course in Miracles:
“teach only love, for that is what you are.”