Run For Life

It was not our most perfect lion dance but it was one that I will never forget. The best lion dances are always the ones where things do not go as planned. Today's issue was a detached body cloth. We had damaged the cloth during our Canada Day dance and forgot to repair it. Of course we have a fleet of lions we could have used today but we chose the one with the forgotten damage. Challenges like that test the mettle of a lion dance team. Today's challenge was an opportunity for Kobe to show how far his lion dancing has evolved. His adaptation to the situation was masterful and he established today as one of my favourite lion dances ever. Check out CTV Edmonton's newscast tonight to see what happened.

More importantly, our lion dance today was to support Stony Plain's Suicide Prevention Hotline as we do every year. It was an emotional day as we lost the individual who originally got us involved with this event to suicide a couple of months ago. Mental illness affects us all yet the stigma associated with it continues to prevail.

I am grateful to have been able to share today with people who are so important to me. Life is short and life is fragile.

“Little Fly 
Thy summers play, 
My thoughtless hand 
Has brush'd away. 

Am not I 
A fly like thee? 
Or art not thou 
A man like me? 

For I dance 
And drink and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life 
And strength and breath,
And the want 
Of thought is death,

Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die”

 ― William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1757 - 1827)