Let it out.

Last Saturday a friend and I wandered through the West Village.  It's somewhere I rarely go.  

1.) It's west.  

2.) It's home to NYU.  

3.) It's full of expensive boutiques, expensive restaurants and expensive brownstones.  

We found ourselves sitting in Washington Square Park, drinking Diet Dr. Pepper, and listening to some pretty good jazz musicians. And this little girl was just letting loose.  Letting it all out.  Her energies, her joy; everything just came spilling through her arms and legs.  Not graceful but soulful.  

So, when did this become unacceptable?  She's just doing what comes natural.  Feeling alive.  Feeling the music.  It seems like we unlearn a lot the older we get.  Our connection with expressing ourselves.  When I was a child I sang, danced, and talked things through to myself- ALOUD.  I made up my own songs and tunes and they were beautiful- to me, to my parents, to God.  

Organically, these things come to children.  But as adults we have to know the words and the melody before we will sing.  Even then, it has to be when we are alone.  We can't sing because we don't know how.  We can't dance, because we don't know the moves.  We can't pray because we don't know what words to say.  Just let it out.  

Somewhere we forgot that praying and singing and moving are just an overflow of what's inside.  It' s not something that you get right or get wrong.  It just is.

I recently read an excerpt from Ann Lamott's book Traveling Mercy's. I love her style and voice and honesty as a Christian woman.  I don't agree with everything she says, but I respect her views and learn from her essays nonetheless.  The piece is called "Knocking on Heaven's Door" and in the story two people are reconciled through music. And she says:

"I can't imagine anything but music that could have brought about this alchemy.  Maybe it's because music is about as physical as it gets:  your essential rhythm is your heartbeat; your essential sound, the breath.  We're walking temples of noise, and when you add tender hearts to this mix, it somehow lets us meet in places we couldn't get to any other way."