A friend posted a great picture on my Facebook page.

It is a picture of a band; Northwind by name.  Taken when I was in my twenties, the picture shows the faces of those I made music with for years.  I was a singer in a rock and roll band.

We had so much fun.  We were a cover band, launching ourselves into sharing whatever it was that would make people dance.  And they did.

I look at the face of that twenty-something year old woman and I laugh.  The picture was taken before I knew the stretch of being a mother.  It was taken before ministry and divorce and re-familying and the bumps and grinds that have made for life.

All that I am now walked in that long ago woman; the good, the challenging, and the questions I am (still!) impatient to have answered.

Who are we, anyway?

As for me, I am grateful for the memories of reveling and music making and night upon night of the dance floor coming alive to “Wild Thing”.

It’s not unlike church.  A crowd gathers every Sunday wanting to be moved to dance, to enter in, to throw ourselves into the jumble that is life.  We want to laugh and cry and mix it up with friends.  We do it without the slop of beer to loosen us.  But the sense of wanting to be taken into an experience larger than ourselves is real.  Spirit sets the table.  We join the dance.

What I’m realizing is that  I am still a singer in a rock and roll band.

And I like it.