A teenage girl helped revolutionize an industry, and her legacy lives on. You know her. You just don’t know you know.
Margie Belcher wanted, more than anything in the world, to have a career as a dancer. That desire had already driven her to study and perfect her dancing skills from a young age, and she had become quite good by the time she reached her teen years. Eventually, she grew up, married another dancer, and they enjoyed a full life of dancing; on the stage, in films, and they even had their own television show.
But none of that is why I'm convinced you know her.
In the mid-1930's, Walt Disney hired the teenaged Margie to come to his studio and dance for his animators. No one had ever made a full length animated film before it, and even in the short cartoons of the day, no one had gone to such lengths to ensure the animated characters moved like real people. When questioned about how watching her dance helped them complete the cartoon they were working on, Disney declared, quite forcefully, "We are not making a cartoon! We are making art!"
What they were making was the first full-length animated motion picture: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. If you've seen it, you've seen Margie Belcher. When Snow White walks, when she sits or stands, when she dances: that's Margie.
Margie was the motion model for Snow White.
Knowing this story changes how we see that first-ever animated film. From now on, whenever you see Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, or even just a clip of Snow White doing something, you will recall that a teenage girl named Margie —a real girl— is behind every move. Knowing about Margie, though, doesn’t change the film. It changes us.
Real life is like that, too. There are many things we know, but know incompletely. We spend our days seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling. We use our senses to help us understand our experiences. And, most of the time, that's the whole of it. Ever once in a while, though, someone reveals something to us that changes how we think about things.
It’s that way with scripture. We enjoy a certain level of familiarity with scripture. But, the more we read of it, the more we understand. That’s the point of the last half of this week’s Psalm 19. The Psalm assures us that reading scripture provides wisdom (even to those with the greatest need of it), rejoices the heart, enhances understanding, revives the soul.
Spending time in the Bible changes us. It’s like young Margie. Her early dance moves were a bit awkward. But as she continued to revisit them, they became smoother, more natural. The more she did it, the better she got. In time, dance became almost second nature to her. Through persistence, Margie became very good. Then, others noticed and invited her to bring her dancing into their lives.
And that is why we continue to read the Bible. Our persistence in it leads us to pray, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”
You knew that. You just didn’t know you knew.
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PHOTO + More about Margie and Disney: https://diabloballet.org/2012/05/26/how-a-champion-dancer-brought-an-animated-classic-to-life/
A different version of this reflection appeared in September 2015 as You Just Don't Know You Know.
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SCRIPTURES FOR THE COMING WEEK
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu//texts.php?id=162
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Let me know if you want to join us for DaySpring’s ZOOM Lectionary Breakfast, Friday morning. We still gather at 8:00 a.m. for an hour of revelation, discussion, and, a staple, laughter.
I will need to give your name to our Zoom Host so they can let you through the gateway.
Enjoy the week!
Steve
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