I wrote this on March 15th, 2020, the day when many churches and organizations closed their doors to a "normal" perhaps we will never know again. Many months later, I find it to still be true...
For some of you, it’s late. You’re in bed asleep. You will wake up & wonder what to do with kiddos while you work. You will watch the news with an odd and strange mixture of anxiety, fear, and faith. You will think about our leaders: mayors, governors, president, teachers, administrators, school superintendents, doctors, nurses, PAs, mental health professionals, and maybe your pastoral leader...and I hope that you will remember that NONE OF US HAVE EVER LED THROUGH A GLOBAL PANDEMIC BEFORE. Give everyone-but particularly your leaders-you see some grace.
But I am up. I am up not because I am worried, but because I am a night owl. Always have been. I love the quiet of the house and I love thinking or creating or watching endless home renovation shows on TV. But tonight...tonight I am doing something I loathe...folding laundry. I’ve had a pile of laundry on my couch for days. Okay, weeks. Okay, I just found a Christmas shirt in there. Take your judgy hat off.
I found myself, tonight, when the remote becomes solely mine...turning to an old comfort. Astaire and Rogers. As in Fred and Ginger. Still don’t know who they are? YouTube it, youngun.
Now, before you “Okay Boomer” me, (which you won’t-it’s just boomers & the Greatest Gen & the Gen Xers on FB anymore...Millenials & younger are on the Tweeter and the Tickedy Tock and such as that so there is literally no one reading this who will call me Boomer.) And before you call me Karen or Susan or any other derogatory internet label, hear me out.
Maybe what we need right now is to believe in a world where a man & woman meet and the plot is real, real thin (I mean, the Marvel movies prove we don’t mind thin plots in post-modernity.) and the man and woman sing and dance. And they sing and dance to Irving Berlin, or Cole Porter, or Gershwin-the American Songbook-songs you’ve heard so many times you don’t even know Fred Astaire sang them first.
And let’s talk about Fred Astaire. Hollywood lore has it that on one of his first auditions the written comment from a studio exec was, “Slightly bald. Can’t act. Can’t sing. Can dance a little.” True story? Meh. Probably not. Does it matter? Probably not. What you see in Fred Astaire is someone at the very top of his craft, who knew he was wiry and not very handsome and had an adequate singing voice-but did it all with a twinkle in his eye and a knowing smirk. And who paved the way, when the time came, for the younger, handsome, athletic Gene Kelly to sing in the rain. Without Fred, there would be no Gene.
And Ginger Rogers. Here’s a real quote about Ginger: “Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, except backwards, and in high heels.” Read that again. I’ve never really made much of being a female pastor. In fact, as my friend Leah Hidde Gregory widely quips, “I’m a pastor who also happens to be female.” (In other words, God called us to be pastors...our gender is secondary to the call.) In my denomination, women have been ordained for over fifty years, and my theological father, John Wesley, was licensing women to preach in the late 1700s. But, I still feel a responsibility as a (female)pastor to be excellent in my ministry...and sometimes it feels like dancing backwards in high heels to our brother pastors (Female clergy, on average, still make less than our male counterparts, just like in the secular world.)
Everything feels so heavy right now. We take things so seriously and we LOOK for things in order to be offended. And maybe, just maybe in the midst of COVID-19, election 2020, General Conference, stock prices, grocery runs, online worship, no sports, kids at home, and the list goes on & on, maybe what we need is two hours of a thin plot in which a man sits around in the middle of the day in a tuxedo and finds a women in a meet-cute and there’s mistaken identity and hilarity ensues. And you don’t think about the plot or look for the holes-you just succumb to what Astaire offers you: dancing in one continual take-meaning he dances and dances and dances and the camera never cuts. Maybe we just need to watch the AMAZING costuming in a 1930s movie. Maybe we need to see Ginger doing everything Fred does backward & in high heels and in a DANG DRESS COVERED IN FEATHERS. With a smile on her face.
Maybe during your Quarantine...maybe suspend all reality & join me in binging all the Fred & Ginger you can. And if that’s not your thing...what are your old comforts that put a smile on your face for no reason at all...just sheer enjoyment? Whatever it is that makes you smile & brings you comfort, why don’t you take a moment and do more of that. Get off Facebook or the Tweeter or the Tickedy Tock. Turn off the news, put down the paper, stop all the negative talk. Nope, not gonna save the world or change any impending doom. But it will make folding the laundry more fun.
I found these words from the late film critic Roger Ebert, about the very best Astaire/Rogers collaboration Top Hat, to be particularly relevant today:
“Because we are human, because we are bound by gravity and the limitations of our bodies, because we live in a world where the news is often bad and the prospects disturbing, there is a need for another world somewhere, a world where Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers live. Where everyone is a millionaire and hotel suites are the size of ballrooms and everything is creased, combed, brushed, shined, polished, powdered and expensive. Where you seem to find the happiness you seek, when you're out together dancing cheek to cheek. It doesn't even matter if you really find it, as long as you seem to find it, because appearances are everything in this world, and ...
Let the rain pitter patter
But it really doesn't matter
If the skies are gray.
Long as I can be with you,
It's a lovely day.”
The writer of Philippians shares a similar sentiment by saying:
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things. Philippians 4:8 (NIV)
Written By: Christie Robbins