Cache Cache Experience Paris March 2012

1. Cache Cache Experience Paris March 2012

2. We had just been sent out into Paris to spend the next few hours playing hide and seek with God. We were challenged to look for God and to seek inspiration. I was sitting in the garden behind Notre Dame contemplating what this meant to me. What does it mean for me to seek inspiration? How do I need to be inspired?

3. I had come to Cache Cache expecting to experience and seek God through photography, but God had a different and better plan for me. He wanted to draw out and inspire the dancer in me. I’ve danced my whole life, but as of lately have felt quite stagnant in this area of my life. What does it mean for me to be inspired in the area of dance right now? As I looked around me…

4. He awoke my desire to dance by revealing to me the many ways that He is daily inviting me to dance with Him! I grabbed my ipod and turned on Ólafur Arnolds “Living Room Songs” and asked God to inspire me.

5. Ask and you shall receive. As soon as this song, Near Light, started playing, I was stunned by the clarity and quickness of God’s response. I glanced to my right and saw a flock of pigeons. All of them were moving to the rhythm of the song. Some were about to take flight, some were strutting, others fluttering, but all of them dancing.

6. A few steps further in the garden and; One, and, two, and, one, and, two, and. Back and Forth, back and forth. Again, dancing to the music playing in my ears.

7. Whether or not, there was music coming from my ipod, God was showing me that He can also supply the piece of music for the choreography of my own personal dance with him.

8. The creator invites us to create. Even still pieces of art reflect the movement of spinning, leaping, reaching, bowing and allowing ourselves to be led.

9. I often view large crowds of people and traffic jams as a nuisance, but today it was God reminding me that often in dance you come in to contact with other people. Don’t view those bumps, brushes, and nudges as annoying, they are choreographed interactions in this grand masterpiece. Dance with me. Dance with them.

10. Even painted street lines were becoming patterns on a stage. Dynamic and sharp. There is order in his dance.

11. While some interactions with the other dancers in this piece seemed unplanned, brief and accidental, other interactions have more invested into them; such as this father and his sons joking, chasing, tickling, and playing. There is much pleasure to be found in dancing with our father.

12. When choreographing a dance, consider level, shape, space, depth, lines, rhythm. Sometimes movements are fluid, other times staccato. All of this reminds me of the presence of God all around me and his desire to move with me, in me and through me.

13. This dance is life and this is natural. Allow those large obstacles that you come up against to turn your movement into something graceful, beautiful, soft. Don’t let it break you, let your response be ripples that transform you.

14. As petals floated down from the tree to the dirt covered ground, I was reminded of the softness in His invitation to me. I am held. There is contrast and there is color in this dance.

15. When God invites us to dance, he is the perfect partner. He leads in strength. Will I follow? Will I let him lead? Will I trust His strength?

16. This little boy was in the middle of a crowded plaza and was attempting to break dance. He had no inhibitions and no worries. He had accepted the invitation to dance and it was pure joy to be in the audience!

17. The patterns and reflections that I saw all around the city were no longer static two dimensional images, but interwoven, moving, active reminders of the constant opportunities we are given to choose to dance.

18. Every shape, pattern, color, reflection, broken down shutter, and flawless iron work, became part of a dance, a piece of choreography, a movement, an invitation.

19. How you perceive things often changes your perspective. When I walked past this building, it was difficult to see the beauty of it at first because it is covered entirely with a large net, but once I took the photo, I could hardly see the net anymore. There is beauty beneath if you choose to look long enough. On the outside, I may not be the most beautiful dancer, but when I really look, I see that I am made to dance. I’m beginning to have the right perspective.

20. Don’t stop moving. The warning to stop might just be a challenge to create something new and something different. Go in that new direction. Go.

21. There is light and there is beauty. I am feeling inspired. Inspired to join the dance and inspired to create. Hide and seek. I have found and I have been found.

22. And as if God hadn’t been clear enough in all the ways I had already found Him, his inspiration, and his invitations to dance; as the afternoon came to a close, I passed a group of people dancing together. I think I get it!