dance on

This week we held the annual elementary music & dance concert. It was a time of hectic preparation, as such events are. But it was a also a time of bittersweet reactions, and of roller-coaster emotions, thanks to recent events here at the school. Just before the concert, we had representatives from a US funding source come for a visit. When they came into the library, and were introduced to me, one of them [a journalist] asked me what I enjoyed most about life here. I hadn’t realized it till I said so but what I told her was true: I said that what I love is what seemed at first to be a negative, a hardship, to me. But it is not so negative anymore. The more I settle into life here, the more I realize that the same extremes that stress and infuriate me are also what inspire me. I told her that what I love about this place is the extreme nature of life. And so it is. From grit to grace, we experience it here. Watching the young dancers was yet another stunning reminder of this fact. A reminder of grace, and of what I find beautiful, here in this land of extremes.