Tap Dancing in Roller Skates

Tap Dancing in Roller Skates

February 28, 2017

If you are old enough to remember, and I AM old enough, roller skates had a primitive ancestor to today's evolutionary masterpiece.  In those bygone days, it could be said that roller skate design was intended to weed out the weak - an intentional survival of the fittest.  Early designs were all-metal, with cleats on the front and straps in the back in order to clamp them onto your street shoes.  The rich kids, and I was NOT a member of said category, could afford to have actual shoes designed for skating.  The wheels were still metal, but you did not have to rely upon thin leather straps, and two half-inch cleats to hold the wheels onto your street shoes.  When new, the leather straps worked extremely well.  Invariably though, the cleats on the front would slip off the soles of my shoes and dangle by the leather strap around my ankle.  Normally, this was the cause of a spill, I would be on my back, blood oozing from several wounds around elbows and knees, feet in the air and skates dangling from my ankles.  If you have a picture, and it is not pretty, than you have a pretty good picture.

So, imagine the awe I experienced when watching this clip of Gene Kelly tap dancing while skating with just such a pair of skates.  It is breath-taking....

The year was 1955, and even today this scene inspires others.  It is reported that Kelly said he bought those skates at a hardware store down the street from his apartment.  They were not modified in any way.  I am impressed for a number of reasons, not the least of which are the following.  First, the skates stayed strapped to his shoes.  Second, it appears that he stopped roller skating where he wanted to stop, and began tap dancing where he wanted to tap dance.  Third, in that process, the skates acted like skates when he wanted them to be skates and tap shoes when he wanted them to be tap shoes!  This is extraordinary.  Those skates were surely the design of some evil, foreign power intent on destroying the youth of this nation.  One did not just stop in those skates, they only had go in the design. To tap dance in them is inconceivable.  Fourth, I wonder at Kelly's drive and sacrifice.  He had a reputation in Hollywood for perfection in his choreography.  That cannot be achieved without tremendous practice and equally tremendous sacrifice.  Finally. I am impressed with what this means for a single scene in a movie which most of us have forgotten.  How much sacrifice did Kelly make for a four minute, thirty second scene in a movie which bombed at the box office?

So, as I prepared to write a blog about the importance of fasting and prayer, I was reminded of Gene Kelly tap dancing in roller skates.  I never have bought into fasting making you more conscious of the need for your prayer.  I must admit that outside of the prayer time, mostly my mind is on when I can eat again.  However, the concept that the sacrifice of going without food for a time dedicated to prayer has some merit.  In the eighth chapter of Ezra, a fast is proposed, "so that we might humble ourselves."  Sacrifice, humility and prayer for a purpose - I get that.  I also get that the rumbling of my belly promotes humility.  But maybe that is a throwback to being reminded to eat my lima beans and remember all the starving kids in China.  The biblical account adds that fasting and prayer was often accompanied by the wearing of sackcloth and ashes.  In Jonah, they even made the animals do so in Nineveh.

But why include fasting with prayer?  Jesus taught that it was okay to pester God with prayer.  The "hero" of the parable He tells has been called the "Importunate Widow."  If you need a definition of importunate the nice descriptor is persistent, the more accurate is nag.  In essence, Jesus is telling us to nag God.  I don't think God needs convincing about the level of our desire about a thing.  However, I do think we need to be aware just how committed we need to be about the things we go to God in prayer.  So, fasting in prayer fits.  It is about sacrifice, commitment and drive.  It's putting real effort behind the request.

I have no idea how much practice and sacrifice Gene Kelly put behind making that one scene - I can only imagine.  Perhaps it is a bad idea to use such an illustration.  Today, they could accomplish seeming miracles with computers and visual slight-of-hand.  Kelly did it before all this fakery we have today.  He did it with pure talent, gut-wrenching work, passion and sacrifice.  In the same way, much can be accomplished with prayer and fasting - not because the work is ours, but because the passion and sacrifice demonstrate the commitment - just another way to describe faith.

Today's blog comes in preparation for a day of prayer and fasting by the congregation I serve on March 12th.  Many among us are experiencing the slings and arrows of what I perceive to be spiritual warfare.  It just so happens that the enemy may be trying to undermine faith by using the weakness brought about by physical infirmity.  I don't believe he is strong enough to attack us with physical ailments, but he is strong enough to whisper in our ears lies which undermine faith in times of stress and weakness.  Prayer is our great weapon, and fasting is the practice of faith to fuel that prayer.  So, let us fast and pray.