Dr. Doctrine and the Son Dance Kid FIJ

 

Faith in Jasper BOOSTER ARTICLE -

“Dr. Doctrine and the Son Dance Kid”

 

Late one night in the secret laboratory of Altered Dispositions, see the shadowy figure of a man with a very penetrating and singular gaze hunched over a petrie dish, as all around him various coloured liquids gurgle through a vast array of scientific apparati. The cuff of his white lab coat drags across the pages of his open, dog-eared notebook, black with scribbled formulae, equations, and chapter and verse references, as he majestically enters a mysterious series of figures after the ‘=’ sign that had stood there unanswered for so long.

   It is no other than Dr. Doctrine, Department head of Chemical Theology, on the very verge of shouting “Eureka!” His years of experiments in Induced Human Spirituality has brought him to the cusp of this moment, this remarkable midnight when his pietistic passion will be rewarded. For there in the petri dish a viscid, slightly phosphorescent goo containing all the necessary propositions pertaining to the existence of God, lies concentrated and distilled for easy consumption.

   “No worse than Buckley’s in taste and of far greater remedy,” mutters the good doctor. “Ladies and gentlemen, I, Henry Doctrine, give you the cure for the common agnosticism!”

   With nostrils as wide as a horse’s, head thrown back and now quickly pacing the cluttered lab, Dr. Doctrine cannot resist the temptation to self-eulogize as he imagines the impact of his success in turning the world of the “Sorry,-not-religious!” folk back to a proper understanding of the knowledge of God.

    “No seminaries, no TV healers in white suits, and no street-corner preachers or tracts placed precariously by the urinals; they shall all know from the least to the greatest after a simple course of 3 teaspoons a day for a week! Aah, sweet profundity, oh tonic of Truth - the very Bible in a bottle!” The good professor clapped his hands in delight. “But what shall I call it? Revalationol? Vitamin See? And who should stock it: a book chain or a pharmacy?”

   As he pondered these important points, the doctor suddenly caught sight of some movement outside of his window through the dusty blinds. There, in the moonlight, something was going on. None other than a handsome, agile youth was dancing gracefully around a wooden cross he had evidently set up in the college commons. He appeared to be alone, and yet not alone. If it were a performance, it was intended for no human eye.

  “Surely it’s past curfew!,” he muttered, as with two fingers Dr Doctrine parted the louvered blinds in order to press his bespectacled face closer to the unaccountable scene that was being played out before him.

   The dancer leapt and twirled in balleted-abandonment like a Rudolf Nureyev, hardly seeming to touch the ground, and he sang -oh, how he sang!-like an Adam before a leafless Eve. It was one - the dance and the song, and after some squinted minutes the doctor was struck that its theme was no other than what lay in his petri dish: the great and beautiful things of Father, Son and Spirit, of Creation and Redemption, of Heaven come to Earth, and Holy Love’s kiss of grace, and yet how unlike the chemical composition on the counter of the lab! Nothing of cold metal spoons, prescribed doses and unpleasant aftertastes!

   “Eternal Light, O Father of Hearts, I, your Son Dance kid, delight to colour and give sound to Your most precious Breeze! But my words are dust and the flow of my thought so soon depletes!” So sang the entrancing character, making the reds of joy and the blues of sorrow flutter and intermingle like silk scarves held aloft his garlanded head. Here was a heart on parade. Spirited emotion. A body unbound. And peering through the window in wonder was a head, a mind, an equally passionate soul but cerebrally so.

   And now the dancer stopped, his expression too soon exhausted. With chest panting and hands upon his thighs, he looked over at the doctor in his lab. Tights and ties, youth and wisdom, strength and understanding. As the two men made eye contact, the cross flashed out a brilliant light and a new music was heard.

  Something strange that night occurred and neither figure was seen again. But that staid college town stayed never the same, for a great saint appeared to live amongst them and on display in this man of a generous spirit was a wholeness and fire that woke many a slumbering soul to life and amazement struck them all how they ever thought they knew the things of Christ, which they now saw they knew but distantly, if at all, until that night that Christ fully knew a man. 

 

  

Pastor Richard Bowler  

Jasper Park Baptist Church