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This work by Jan Richardson is displayed with permission from the author.

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Jan

Richardson

FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS

Jan L. Richardson

 

We are dancing in the streets of the city of my college years.  The downtown is lit up for the holidays, and the music blares as our feet repeatedly hit the hard surface of the street.  Tomorrow we will long for hot baths to soak the soreness from our legs, but tonight we are dancing at the Festival of Lights.

         In the years to come I will learn how necessary it is to keep dancing, how celebration is not a luxury but a staple of life, how in the grimmest moments I will need to take myself down to the closest festival at hand.  I will go not to drown my sorrow or to mask my despair or to ignore the real suffering of the world or of my own self.  I will go to beat out the message with my feet that in the darkness we are dancing, and while we are weeping we are dancing, and our legs are aching but we are dancing.  And under the night sky we are dancing; lighting a match to the shadows, we are dancing; starting to sing when they have stopped the music, we are dancing; sending shock waves with our feet to the other side of the world, we are dancing still.

 

Bless the feet that dance

        in Guatemala

        in El Salvador

in the midst of the night

        in Nicaragua

        in Argentina

stamping out the message

        in South Africa

        in Liberia

we will be free.

 

Bless the hands that clap

        in Haiti

        in Rwanda

the rhythm of liberation

        in Palestine

        in Bosnia

that light a match to the dark

        in you

        in me

and carry the coming dawn.

 

from her book Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and Christmas (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 1998)