lift me up
Lift me up
The music erupts, like a cry, swelling suddenly in the dark.
As if before I had no idea I had fallen asleep, I inhale on the crescendo, watching, watching the stage, feeling how the Breath—the ruach, expands and lifts me.
In one way or another, we’re all looking for a good raising, and I have noticed lately, my finger sliding down the pages of Scripture, that after the resurrection of Christ, every time someone in Christ stands or wakes up, the language says they arose. That is to say, they came awake as if from the sleep of death, or they came alive, as one newly born. Not just once, but every time. This is, of course, how He said it would be.
In the psalms, David repeatedly refers to God as the one who lifts me up, or the one who raises me.
I lean into the solid feel of my dear friend’s shoulder, wondering if she’s seeing what I’m seeing as Adam lifts his arms in triumph, the way he does when he gets a strike in bowling, when something thoroughly good has happened and his obvious joy shoots right out from the tips of his fingers.
When Adam was a very small, downy-headed Autistic boy, I got him a t-shirt that said, I get flappy when I’m happy, to explain the way Adam’s body always expresses what his words cannot. It’s not that people with Autism can’t or don’t communicate, just that they do it differently sometimes. I smile, remembering, realizing it’s not such a surprise that my son loves to dance.
From where I sit in the audience, I can feel Adam’s joy, and with it, a tenderness for my son that aches in my bones, my gut.
An involuntary sound, soft and amazed, escapes my lips.
Sitting in the auditorium before the show, my leg bobbing in anticipation, I had read in the program the title of their piece, triumph, had picked Adam’s sweet face out in the group picture, had found his long, lean body tucked in safely among a crowd of precious friends. You can see it, there in the picture, the thing they all want to say, but it will only be in later commentary that someone puts into words for us what our dancers will show so keenly, that we triumph with the support of community.
Lift me up, Rhianna’s voice again, bell-clear, and I think, no one rises alone. There must always be a lifter, and so, the raising always happens in communion.
…hold me down; keep me close, safe and sound.
The lyric sounds so succinctly familiar that I feel it gathering in my soul like a witness, like something condensed from a hundred psalms, like an echo of eternity.
This is the thing for which we were created, a union that lifts and holds and keeps us close and safe.
I watch as some of the other dancers—Adam’s friends, a teacher from school–bend, lift Adam into the air, and begin, slowly, to rotate him. Adam keeps his arms outstretched, reaching, it seems, to the sky.
I think of Moses, of that story of Israel’s battle with Amalek, how God bound the victory to Moses’ lifted hands. As long as Moses kept his hands in the air, Israel triumphed, so when he got tired, his friends helped him hold up his arms. Lifted hands, in worship, convey the dependence of a child reaching, an emptiness longing to be filled by God. In that battle, I think those lifted hands were a banner, a gestural sermon in the Autistic style that said, He who lifts us is our triumph.
Sometimes, God grants us the grace to see an unseen thing manifested, and I see it now, watching how carefully Adam’s friends hold him steady, that Adam couldn’t keep his hands extended like that when they lift him except that he trusts that they won’t let him drop. Otherwise, the smile disappearing from his face, he would glance toward the ground and prepare to break his own fall. It occurs to me that, despite our look, no hands culture, the only real victory happens just this way, as it did for Moses, with friends holding us up and God filling our reaching hands. The thing that eventually comes to us is that if there are friends, God has given them. If there is community, God has built it. I don’t have to hold on with my own hands, because in all the ways, God is holding me. I didn’t know that as a child, not really, but I do remember that, knowing my dad had hold of me, I could reach while he, extending his own arms, lifted me into the air. God lifts me so I can reach for Him.
God has, over many, many years, encouraged me stop holding on to everything so tightly, and watching Adam now, that reach, that trust, that joy, I can see that it’s easier to extend my empty hands if I’m not consumed with breaking my own fall.
But we have fallen before, most of us, have felt the smack of the ground beneath us and wondered if maybe God let go, even though He never really does. If we fall, He falls beneath us, surrounding us, with us. It’s not true that with God holding all goes well, not while we’re here, not true that we won’t get hurt, only true that He never leaves, that He can be trusted with what He allows, that He’s here, lifting us all over again, even when we can’t see Him. For every fall, there will be a raising. Not just one time, but every time. We arise and arise and arise because of the one who rose, once and for all.
Adam’s friends, they carefully set him down, their hands unwavering, their bodies careful, strong, until, steady again on the stage, Adam comes alive, to keep on dancing.
