Dancing in the Street

I have a recurring dream: I'm black ("colored" as we used to say), fortyish, plump, and I'm dancing right in the middle of a festive street. I've always hoped I have at least a little "colored" blood in me.

Today, on the Oprah channel on Sirius radio, in the car, I heard the song "Dancing in the Streets" as part of a radio preacher's "sermon" on transformation.  Now, I don't usually listen to radio preachers because they are so often smug and bossy and because I don't agree with what they're saying.  But this guy--his name was Reverend Ed Bacon (I'd never heard of him before) was using the old Martha and the Vandella's "Dancing in the Street" as his "hymn of transformation."  I heard only a snippet, but I liked what he said and I liked that he found himself dancing recently to this song in a Starbucks.  I do that, too.  I'll just be minding my business and hear a song and start dancing, all by myself, wherever I am.

The point Ed Bacon was making was that "salvation" is not about believing certain things to earn a place at the table in Heaven, but it's about finding "the word" that is planted in each person at birth.  He told about how he was going to law school and realized that "law" wasn't his word.  To be transformed, he said, is to find your word and live it, not to conform to what anyone else thinks your word ought to be.

I'm going to be pondering that today.  What is my word?