I GOT RHYTHM

I was quietly sitting there in the church pew when I noticed her toes tapping next to me. As the choir sang out, so were other toes around me. Including mine. Hmm, I guess it's true. In this life we all got rhythm....!

The sound of music will almost always energize our bodies to respond to its rhythm. Fast or slow, adagio to vivace, the music around us has its way with us whether we're conscious of it or not. So do the emotions within us, for from impatience to irritation our body-signals are hard to guard and even harder to miss.

It's equally true with the people around us. Those we love like the infant in our arms coax out of us gentle swaying and cuddling motions. Just as those we dislike generate automatic stiffening and withdrawing motions. You see, whether we can dance or not, we really do have rhythm.

There are other rhythms too, congenital to our very being. Consider that softening feeling that slips over us when we're communing with nature on a sparkling spring morning. Or that inexpressible yielding sensation that washes over us when we're in deep prayer. I suppose there are some biological research studies on some college campuses right now trying to isolate the exact brain lobe or gene pool that can explain all this. But do we actually need to dissect this...? Isn't experiencing it sufficient unto itself....?

To be sure, there are other rhythms that we respond to in this life. Say the metallic marching beat of a military band calling out from us the pride and fury of patriotism, Or the plodding dirge of a funeral mass to which our every muscle resonates. Or what about the roaring ecstasy of a rock 'n roll concert or the sweaty joy of a dixieland band? Or the sacred quietude of a close family unit? None of these rhythms are out there as much as they are quite literally in here.

Press the premise further and you can see and sense the rhythms of a nation as a whole. When Franklin Roosevelt looked out at a nation on its economic knees, he himself a cripple beckoned from out of us a revived rhythm of hope. When Ronald Reagan looked out on a nation adrift, his rhythm of national pride helped re-charge that same rhythm in us. And now a new president has rendered a spirit-broken people a pair of addresses (first at Georgetown and now Notre Dame) that to many sound like the symphonies of a wiser tomorrow.

Now lets see how many toes tap to the rhythm of his words...