A Requiem For The Dancing Grannies
[guest post by JVW]
Over at The Federalist, Jayme Metzgar has a very lovely essay about The Dancing Grannies, a Milwaukee-based troupe who lost three members on Sunday in the horrible attack in Waukesha. Do yourself a favor and head over there to read it, but if you need further convincing, here’s a small taste:
A friend and I were recently discussing the tension we feel between seriousness and humor, both online and in real life. Living as eternal souls in this sin-cursed world is undoubtedly serious business. I’m always bringing up weighty matters of politics or theology, because how else will we learn to live well in this life or the next? It matters.
At the same time, we must laugh. Humor is the padding that keeps life from being all sparks and sharp angles. It defuses tensions and reminds us we’re all human. After all, our very existence as angel-like souls inside animal-like bodies is tinged with comedy.
[. . .]
Dancing Grannies are the very best kind of humor: the gentle kind that laughs at oneself and at life, that laughs at the fact that somehow, while your spirit stayed young, your body turned into a septuagenarian’s while you weren’t looking. And you dance anyway.
In one horrifying moment, it was all snuffed out. [. . .]
Go to The Federalist and read the entire essay. It’s brief but at the same time heavy in religious overtones, yet given what happened on Sunday and the holiday we are celebrating on Thursday, I find the theme to be quite appropriate. May these ladies dance to their hearts’ content in Eternal Salvation.
– JVW