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READING: excerpt from Gift from the Sea
by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
"A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of
the same rules. The partners do not need to hold on tightly, because
they move confidently in the same pattern, intricate but gay and swift
and free, like a country dance of Mozart’s. To touch heavily would be to
arrest the pattern and freeze the movement, to check the endlessly
changing beauty of its unfolding. There is no place here for the
possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand; only the barest
touch in passing. Now arm in arm, now face to face, now back to
back---it does not matter which. Because they know they are partners,
moving to the same rhythm, creating a pattern together, and being
invisibly nourished by it.
"The joy of such a pattern is not only the joy of creation or the joy of
participation, it is also the joy of living in the moment. Lightness of
touch and living in the moment are intertwined. One cannot dance well
unless one is completely in time with the music, not leaning back to the
last step or pressing forward to the next one, but poised directly on
the present step as it comes. Perfect poise on the beat is what gives
good dancing its sense of ease, of timelessness, of the eternal... The
dancers who are perfectly in time never destroy life in each other or in
themselves.
"But how does one learn this technique of the dance? Why is it so
difficult? What makes us hesitate and stumble? It is fear, I think, that
makes one cling nostalgically to the last moment or clutch greedily
toward the next.... But how to exorcise fear? It can only be exorcised
by its opposite, love. When the heart is flooded with love, there is no
room in it for fear, for doubt, for hesitation. And it is this lack of
fear that makes for the dance. When each partner loves so completely
that he has forgotten to ask himself whether or not he is loved in
return: when he only knows that he loves and is moving to its music.
Then, and then only, are two people able to dance perfectly in tune to
the same rhythm."
SERMON
 want
to tell you a story about the power of dance. The story comes from the
Unitarian Universalist theologian Thandeka. She interviewed a Catholic
priest, who spent several months in Ethiopia doing famine relief work in
a devastated village. He told Thandeka of an experience that changed his
life.
Soon after he arrived in the village, an airdrop of food was overdue.
Rather than sitting around idly, the people of the village danced a
circle dance for hours on end, to send good energies to the ‘gods’ of
the airdrop, like people in Haiti sang while watching rescue efforts. To
the beat of a drum, the dance was very simple: 1 - 2 - 3 - JUMP, 1 - 2 -
3 - JUMP, over and over. So the priest decided to join in. But he
discovered a horrible reality: he was dance-impaired. He couldn’t jump
at the right time: too soon, too late, never on the beat. Villagers
broke out in peals of laughter watching him. Some fell on the ground
laughing so hard. The priest knew the villagers were laughing with him,
not at him. He admitted that he probably marched to the beat of a
different drummer.
But he also learned something much more important. Tears filled his eyes
as he recalled for Thandeka his ‘ah-hah’ moment!...His whole life
through, he told her, he had KNOWN God. But it was only there, dancing
in community, that he also FELT God. He felt God as the unconditional
love that the community expressed through dancing together.
The Priest was grateful for the power of dance, and I am too, in this
month when gratitude is our worship theme. I am grateful for this
beautiful art form that engage body, mind, soul, and spirit.
Definitions
‘Dance’ is often used metaphorically to
describe human relationships, as we heard Anne Morrow Lindberg in the
reading. We ‘dance’ around issues, or psychologists talk about the
‘dance of anger’ or the ‘dance of intimacy.’
However, today it is not dance as metaphor, but dance as actual bodily
engagement, as you have already seen, that I want to talk about. Dance,
an art form, usually to music, and a physical activity that is also
important spiritual practice.
Many of you have heard my explanation of ‘spirituality,’ but let me
review it in this context of dance. Spirituality for me is about
connections that nurture goodness, creativity, and relationships. Such
connections can be at several levels at the same time. First,
connections within myself, how I feel the parts of myself connected as I
move in dance. Once connected to myself, I then connect outward: to
other dancers, to the earth and the universe around me, to the space I’m
dancing in. Finally, I also connect with sacred mysteries of life that I
call by many names. For me as a dancer, as well as one observing dance
of others, connections at these various levels are transformational. In
many cultures dance has not been considered to be proper for church, but
for me, dance, of any style, is a very sacred act.
The priest in Ethiopia experienced spiritual transformation through
dance. He connected first to his own body, even if he wasn’t quite on
the beat, and then to the villagers and the world around him, and then
to the divine. He was transformed to a new experience of God.
The Body in Religion
Dance engages us at the
cellular level, not at the rational level. The notion that spirituality
can be found via the body might be a new idea for some of us. You may
understand spirituality as something of the mind, something intangible,
otherworldly. For most westerners, spirituality is embedded in the mind.
We have a long history of ‘mind-over-body.’ We have inherited the Greek
emphasis on reason: the WORD was God, for example. Western philosophy
has also emphasized mind over body. In many periods and places across
history, life on earth was hard and we humans located religion --- the
subject matter of life’s most intimate and ultimate questions --- in the
mind or out there in the heavens, where it was safe.
Unfortunately, this practice of separating mind from body led to many
bad habits. Mind, the heavens, and the sacred: these were associated
together, quite separated from body, the earth, and the everyday. This
is the same mindset that to this day prohibits dancing in some
religions.
Add to this the Cartesian dualism that has dominated western culture
these past four centuries: seeing the world in opposites, with the mind
opposing the body and also superior to it. Descartes didn’t say, ‘I
dance, therefore I am.’ No, he said, ‘I think, therefore I am.’ Dualism
also associated the mind with ‘man’ and the body with ‘woman.’ And since
mind was superior over body, .... well , you know the consequence. ....
Women and their bodies ended up in a subservient role. Until recently,
didn’t western culture assume math and science were disciplines for the
male mind alone? Other dualisms developed, in race, class, income, and
so on, that can account for so many other types of oppression.
On the other hand, there are plenty of examples of the body’s role in
religion. Buddhism honors mind and body equally: there is no line
between the two. Also, for two thousand years, Christianity has
celebrated the notion of Incarnation: that is, the Word made flesh, the
holy articulated through a human being, Jesus. Incarnational theology is
body theology. And liberal theology is grounded in body and sense
experiences. A German theologian who many consider the Father of UU
theology, Frederick Schleiermacher, promoted ‘embodied theology,’ the
notion that humans access religious experience through the senses.
Religion, an experience of feeling more than knowing. More recently,
women-centered theology locate the holy in women’s bodies. It’s probably
not coincidental that one of the best-known books by one of the
best-known feminist theologians----Starhawk---is called ‘Spiral Dance.’
The theology that I most identify with, Process Theology, understands
the earth as God’s body. As God’s body, it is important to care for the
earth, to insure the health and survival of the earth.
Even the call to people of religion to work for social justice addresses
the needs of the body and the body politic. That is, to be fully
realized and lived, religion must be at work in the world---in God’s
body. The social ethicist James Luther Adams wrote: “... Religion must
be seen, touched, voiced, and heard, in order to be identified or
expressed. A religion that has nothing to do with the body, with the
life of the senses, without communal forms of expression does not exist
except in the imagination. As Cardinal John Henry Newman put it,
religion must express itself in particular acts. It develops in ways
similar to the other concerns of life, through social forms, through
books, music, the spoken word, spoken prayers, church building, through
sacrificial action. To claim to be religious and also not to be
interested in these things is like saying that one is interested in
poetry but in no specific poems; it is like saying that one believes in
government but not in legislatures and ballot boxes, that one is
interested in education but not in schools. There is no such thing as
poetry apart from poems; there is no such thing as government apart from
constitutions or courts or police, no such thing as education without
the disciplines of education.... The religion that is purely spiritual
is purely nonexistent.... Religion must be realized in particular acts
in order to insure its continuing alive.” Isn’t this the lesson the
priest learned in Ethiopia?
Call for more body work
Most Americans could engage
their bodies much more. How many of you make New Year’s resolutions to
think more each day? Here in the twenty-first century, we are still the
inheritors of Descartes. Our culture rewards a fit mind over a fit body,
for all except the super athletes. Think about how much of modern life
is disembodied, not in touch with real-life bodies. How many video games
include victims of shooting, or drivers who crash cars at high speed,
and come back to life the next time the game is played?
It doesn’t have to be dancing: there are many physical activities that
can help us honor the body and its potential for spiritual connections.
Recently I heard a minister preach about jogging as spiritual practice.
I had a congregant once who said what she missed from her former
religion was kneeling during worship: a physical act that engaged her
body in a spiritual experience. I realize many of us, especially of
certain age, have some physical challenges. Please hear me: I am not
suggesting that we pretend there are no physical limitations among us.
What I am urging is that we each take on an attitude of claiming the
body: it is the tangible stuff of what we are.
English Dancing
I regularly engage in dance, as
exercise, as social time, as spiritual practice. That bumper sticker ‘Gotta
Dance’ really does apply to me. I can tell when I’ve gone too many days
without dancing: I am less spiritually tuned.Dancing puts me right with
myself and with others.
I do contradance and English dance. Both are social dance, that is,
dance done for the pleasure of the company of other dancers. It is
English dance that we are presenting today as part of this service. This
dance began in the seventeenth century, in elegant English country
houses. Dance then served as social training: one learned etiquette
through the dance. You often see this style of dance in the various Jane
Austin movies: dance was also an important vehicle for romantic
flirtations. This style of dance is still being written anew today. We
are continuing a four-hundred-year-old tradition, so I also feel
connections to many who came before me doing these same dances. Dance is
history. Hundreds of people do this dance here and around world,
especially in Europe.
Dancing is not about the feet: it is about the spirit. All of us can
dance at some level, even if we have real physical limitations in our
bodies. We can connect the spirit of our bodies with the spirit of the
music around us, and ‘feel’ the beat, experience the connections. I knew
someone once who refused to dance, someone who would not believe that
dancing is not about the feet, it’s about the connections. Echoing Anne
Morrow Lindbergh, I suspect that this person was blocked with fears that
dancing might have alleviated. Dancing is transformative. I often wish
there could be a dance before any important meeting, perhaps before your
next committee meeting, or our next congregational meeting, or a meeting
you have at work? Dancing opens communication. It’s almost impossible to
not smile when dancing. If I go to a dance stewing about something, it
takes just one or two dances to see the world positively again. Dancing
puts me in right relationship with myself and with others.
English dance offers many different opportunities for connections. For
one, we create geometric floor patterns. The written directions for this
dancing often appear as line drawings outlining the path of the dancers.
You have seen us today move up the line, across the line, along the
line, and more. At a ‘real’ dance, any given dance might last 10 minutes
or more: for time reasons, we are making these shorter here in the
service.
This dance uses a caller as leader, to remind the dancers of the
geometric patterns and keeping us moving on the same move at the same
time. Today we are just four, but in a large ballroom, potentially
hundreds of dancers are all moving to same beat at same time with the
same motions. This moving together, this sense of group connections, is
truly spiritual and truly energizing. The well-patterned dance floor is
a model for congregational life. It is a representation of the common
community that we strive for in a covenanted congregation, kept together
by a caller and a well-tuned band of musicians. The right and left hand,
or dancers, know what each other is doing. All dancers respect the calls
of the leader and dance to the beat of the music. All dancers celebrate
the beauty that is created when a group of individuals move together to
the same drummer.
English dance is also a partnered dance. Historically this partnering
was gendered --- one man, one woman --- but today there are many
non-gendered dances. Frequently we dance either role, depending on the
balance of gender at any given dance. As you’ve seen, a dancer will
dance with her or his partner and others in the set in the course of one
dance. As in life, some dancers make better partners than others: there
is a spontaneous clicking when you are with a compatible partner. But,
as in life, you dance with everyone as each person comes along, striving
for the greatest beauty you can create in your ten seconds together .
Because this is social dance, it is important to look your partner in
the eye. You learn a lot about someone else through eye contact. You
build trust. Especially in more robust styles of dancing involving more
rigorous physical movement, trust is essential if your hope to find the
freedom dance makes possible. Dance teaches trust in life. Dance is also
egalitarian: social, economic, and class status don’t matter. Oh yes,
flirting is also an option while looking all those various connections
in the eye.
There are many other styles of liturgical and social dancing --- you may
engage in some --- various ballroom dances, other ethnicities such as
Scottish, Scandinavian, Greek, etc. --- that can have the same spiritual
benefits: they break down communication barriers and help us let go of
inhibitions. They connect us with others.
Art dancing is generally more studied and disciplined than social dance,
but it is also spiritual practice. Classical ballet, for example, has
great potential to connect a dancer with herself and with others and
with unexplainable spiritual experiences, through music, costumes, and
other aspects of performance.
Your body spirituality
Do you have physical
activities that are your spiritual practice? It doesn’t have to be
dancing. What matters is that we do engage the body. Most people who
work out know that they will be physically healthier, but we are also
spiritually healthier. Perhaps its team sports. Or power-walking with a
friend, or meditative walking by yourself. Perhaps it gardening or yoga
or swimming or ----- You fill in the blank. For me, skiing and other
winter sports are also spiritual: they are great physical conditioning
and also connect me with the sacred that lives in the mountains.
No matter what your theology, physical activities enhance our
participation in religious community and our personal experience with
this journey we call life. Spiritual practice matters.
To quote our final hymn coming up after our concluding dance, a hymn
written by Ric Master, My friends, ‘May I have this dance with you?...
through the good times and the bad times too.... Let it be a dance.” SO
BE IT.
Please do not copy or reproduce without permission of the author.
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