The Last Waltz

I always wanted to be a good dancer. It started as a first grader at Ella Darling Elementary School in Greenville, Mississippi. I had seen my friend, Marilyn Arnold, dance in her tap shoes at a class talent show, and I knew that's what I wanted for myself. I even lied to other friends about taking dancing lessons, ballet and tap, but I knew my own single mother was too poor to spend money on such a luxury.

When I was around ten though, my mother hooked up with a new boyfriend. Evidently, she shared with him my goal of taking dancing lessons. He agreed to pay for them. I remember the excitement of putting on my soft pink ballet slippers for the first time. I knew that I had a wonderful career in front of me. Unfortunately, what I didn't count on was having two left feet by that time; I had reached that pre-adolescent stage with a stiff body that was anything but "light on her feet." Fortunately, my mother broke up soon with her boyfriend, and my potential dance career ended.

I danced somewhat awkwardly as a teenager when rock and roll was the rage in the late '50 and early '60's to the tunes of Elvis, Chubby Checker, The Big Bopper, and others. I slow danced to those of Johnny Mathis, The Platters, and Marvin Gay. As a young married woman, however, I did not dance. My husband had been raised in a Southern Baptist Church (as I had), but his church did not believe in such amusements as card playing, movies, drinking, smoking, and certainly not dancing. I never lost, however, my desire to glide beautifully across a dance floor with my partner.

I thought about my childhood dreams on Tuesday afternoon of this week when I went to see the small independent film That Evening Sun. The Hal Holbrook character deals with such issues as aging, the longevity of relationships, stubbornness, class, land, and so on. My husband and I wanted to see the film because of those themes but also because it was Holbrook's wife, Dixie Carter's, last movie. There is a poignant scene at the end which shows the two characters dancing a slow dance and loving their relationship. It reminded me of the brevity of life and the transience of it. I used to think as a graduate student at Ole Miss that the Romantics' interest in this issue was obsessive. Now I see their point. While "a thing of beauty is a joy forever," people aren't. They grow old.

This summer I will have been married forty-five years (and my mother said the marriage would never last). While I know I will never be able to glide in this life seamlessly across the dance floor (now because of creaking old bones more likely), I envision a time in eternity when I will enjoy "the last waltz" with my husband. It will be beautiful, and it will last forever.

The Epidemic of Victimology

It seems the big topic of both churches and culture, in general, these days is that of victimology. Everyone's a victim. In church for the past few months, we have been hearing both liberal and even more traditionally conservative theologians speak of Christ's being a victim of the Roman Empire. This idea, of course, runs counter to what churches have taught for thousands of years, namely that God sent His son into the world to be the propitiation for the sins of humanity. Even Judas, the disciple, has been seen recently as a victim of God's big plan for Christ's life and death. Some say Judas should be viewed as a rather sympathetic person in the New Testament since he was just a tool in the plan.

In culture, we have been hearing for some years now about the victimization of children in the Catholic Church. They have been subjected to sexual abuse by priests. I can certainly agree with this view; children are victims when the people they trust most in the world, other than their parents, take advantage of their naivete.

What bothers me, however, most about the epidemic of victimology in our culture is the adult who claims to be a victim and perhaps is not. I am thinking most recently of the media discussion of Sandra Bullock and Elin Wood. I fall into the category of people who believe these wives are smart and must have had a clue as to their husbands' infidelities and fetishes. Also, I am amazed by the mistresses of Tiger who believe they are victims because they had the mistaken belief that they were the ONLY mistresses in Tiger's life.

The shifting of personal responsibility to others, unfortunately, has been a characteristic of humanity since the Garden of Eden. Will we ever learn to simply say, "I am sorry; I am responsible; I knew but turned my cheek the other way."