what makes you feel alive?

What makes you feel most alive?

This was always one of the questions from "The Jesus Experiment" that Pastor Brian headed up through Spiritual Life and Campus Ministry at Wartburg.  I always liked the wording of the question; it's not a "normal" thing that you might ask yourself.  If I remember correctly, it comes from St. Ignatius and his examen reflection.

Last Friday I had an 'alive' moment.
We, the specials teachers, were travelling with our elementary students to the high school to hear local Olympian, 2014 skeleton bronze medalist, and PdC graduate Matt Antoine speak to the entire district student body.  While we were waiting, the HS pep band played some tunes.
Imagine this: trying to keep hundreds of pre-K through 1st graders in semi-straight lines sitting on the floor in the middle of a loud gym, waiting.  Sounds chaotic, yes?  You're absolutely right.

Enter my 'alive' moment.

Being a music teacher, I capitalize on musical teachable moments as much as possible.
Since we were missing official music class for the day, I figured I'd make an impromptu lesson out of this great opportunity. The band was playing, and it was too loud to discuss instruments or anything, so I just started keeping a steady beat, and my students followed.
We clapped.
We patted our legs.
We patted our heads.
We discoed.
We raised the roof.
We used both hands together.
We alternated hands.
We clapped on every beat.
We clapped on every other beat.
We tapped our shoulders.
We crossed our arms.
We clapped in an alligator-mouth sort of style.
(I call this whole action sequence "follow the bouncing beat.")

Not only did my kindergarten students follow me, so did the pre-K students sitting in front of them, some of the first graders behind them, some of my second graders who were on bleachers on the other side of the room, other intermediate school students along that same wall of bleachers, and some silly middle school students way at the top row of a different section of bleachers (who probably thought I was off my rocker and were mocking me, but whatever).

We were all keeping the beat.

It was magical.

I knew that hundreds and hundreds of people were staring at me, but I didn't care one bit.  I knew I was doing my job in a way that wasn't expected of me,
and I was having a blast doing what I love:
making music fun.

I had this weird/cool feeling of being just like my elementary music teacher growing up, getting everyone excited in the simplest of ways.  I have blurry but fond memories of her enthusiastically keeping the beat in different ways with us students, including at pep rallies and stuff.
I felt just like her, and it made me super happy.

I just felt so ALIVE.


What in your life makes YOU feel alive?  

Can you find something today that makes you feel alive and really present in the joy of a moment?