Finding Form

The dance found its way into form in my body last night. A space “in the round,” it was. Opportunity to move and not think, listen and not talk. I heard how weary I am, what rest I seek. And then right foot behind left, left step over, right foot in front, left foot follows, right knee up, left knee up, repeat. Arms stretched out to touch the shoulders of other saints, previous and present, repeat.  Unassuming. Understated. Invitational. An ancient congregational rumba line. My spirit soared. “I remember it!” I heard myself say inside. “This is how they do it. This is how we do it.”

The words of one of my teachers from way back arise in awareness here, this morning: architecture always wins. John Bell noted this with respect to community-singing and sanctuary architecture and accoutrement—carpets, pews with pew pads, arrangement of furniture, etc. A paraphrase of his teaching: “If you want people to sing, the space needs to be welcoming of their song, period. No carpet or pew pads to soak up the sound, isolate voices. People sitting close to one another so they know they are not vulnerably voicing their song alone.” Traditional spaces for communal song today prohibit most of this, of course. Rows of pews fashioned for comfort welcome the seated, but they also encourage isolation, spacing apart, vulnerable spaces for unaccustomed voices. Architecture always wins. Isolation grows, and song diminishes.

How much more true this is for body-work, movement, embodied or sensate awareness in most communal settings today. Movements are channeled only at right angles from one another—into the pews, or up and back the aisle. Sometimes you have a daring space that has diagonal aisles, but rare those are. People who gather—any ecclesia—will move and think as the surrounding architecture determines. How do we move and think? In right angles from one another, increasing space toward isolation, with polarized, either/or habits of mind.

How might circles and spirals find their way into form in our future, into our midst, I wonder? If the multitudes are accustomed to squares, rectangles, and straight edges, how does one encourage a different flow of line?

Disruption and disorientation, for starters. Starting anew somewhere else, then inviting us all in? Perhaps it is less about joining the dance, more about allowing the dance to find its form in you. Them. Us.

Sacred Dance...for Evangelicals?

I wonder if there’s any way for religious Midwesterners to join a dance?

Multiple questions arise with this notion, not least of which is “Huh?” What kind of dance? Do you need a partner? And do we really expect Evangelicals or Baptists to participate? Is the question even a Spirit-leading for discipleship in this context, where most faithful I know scurry elsewhere at the mention of “liturgical dance”? Seriously, when I was growing up, my mother and father would shepherd us to Sunday School, then we would gather together for worship all mornings except when liturgical dance was listed in the Order of Worship. “We’re going Methodist today,” my Presbyterian father would say as he scuttled us out of the sanctuary. Dance of any kind is the ultimate religious deal-breaker.

Granted, the kind of dance about which I’m thinking is not like any dance I’ve known. It’s closest to a congregational rumba line. There’s nothing liturgical about it in the above sense, though it does occur within a Eucharistic liturgy. I’ve experienced it only once, though multiple iconic images have seared the image of it in my awareness. Where would we start to even consider the questions? Of course, St. Gregory of Nyssa Church. All “free” reflections this week seem to eventually wind up back there. It’s like the psychological black hole of the week…though imbued with irrepressible light.

A community of dancing saints…around the Table, above one’s head and below at one’s (moving) feet. Incense is lit. Bells are rung. The Word is read, then proclaimed by a recognized leader and by the gathered community, the ecclesia. Prayers are sung and songs of praise are offered. Then, all stand and hear, “Face the Table, place your right hand on the left shoulder of the person in front of you, three steps forward, one step back.” A hymn tune is intoned, and the dance begins. A stately rumba line approaching the table, circling upon circling, gathering all those gathered into the Communion, whether one aims to partake or not. The saints above are not all Christian, by profession, nor are those below-around the Table certain of their beliefs. But all are welcomed as Friends and the dance continues until it is time for the feast. The meal is shared, a song of celebration continues and another stately dance begins and ends. Blessings are shared and the people disperse to bring the love of Friends into the world.

So what’s the big deal? As I reflect on it now, I'm aware of images of Hasidic dancing--pietistic Jews embodying their devotion of Rebbe and G-d (almost) alike. I remember circles of Middle-Eastern men dancing too, whether at a Muslim wedding or in a social setting without overt religious connotations (as I would name them).

First off, something finally happened in Christian worship that touched me so deeply I can’t seem to shake its import. I can truly say I’ve never felt anything like that before. Maybe when I was little, when I was free to move and express in sensate fashion what I was coming to know as True? But even then, I can’t imagine or remember such a time. When was the last time in communal worship that you were truly surprised, truly brought out of yourself and your sense of body? So wholly embraced by strangers and unseen but visible saints “written” into spaces above? I’ve been surprised by the unexpected in worship settings, of course—something falls, somebody says something s/he didn’t mean to, something “goes wrong,” which I always enjoy as “something right,” because then people pay attention in new ways. But I’ve not been surprised like this in a loooooonnnnggg time. I’m doubly blessed to be surprised in my own tradition. I felt so Christian. I haven’t felt companioned in my own tradition in a very long time.

So what to do? Transplanting one community’s practice without context, without communal discernment, into a completely other context is clearly not it. Like having this amazing encounter with Taizé chant in France, then coming back to your own community and asking them to sit on the floor, light candles, and sing songs they’ve never heard. I can save us all the trouble: it won’t go well. Transplanting the dance makes no sense.

Reflect on the dance more, with multiple others, for new listening, new lessons? Clearly, yes. That’s what this is becoming here. But reflecting on it does no justice to the phenomenon reflected. Bodied-faith-practice is like the singularity of Protestantism—you either delve into it and become a body-evangelist who offends all those who do not practice in such embodied fashion, or you use every resource in scripture and tradition to defend against engaging embodied practice at all. “It’s just not my way,” we say. “We are to be born of Spirit, not of the flesh,” we hear. Reflecting on some congregational rumba line will never circumvent this singularity.

So…what?! Spirit breathes new life, touches her children deeply in the play of Wisdom, then spirits off into the horizon with ne’er a look back to see if we understood the touch in the first place.

Sigh.

At least the railing has lessened. :)

Aches and Pain of Grace

I never seem to learn. No. That’s not fair, not even accurate. I’m learning all the time, so much so that I wear myself (and others) out with all the learning. I dislike learning absence--of intense connection, of clear sense of purpose, of direction. Absence.

This happens to me every time, so much so that I should expect it, anticipate it, wait for it. I hate “the other side” of transcendence or coming down from “the mountain-top” when it’s time to come into the world and face its demands. My body aches after receiving such gifts of grace, anointing, welcome, and new practice…when it realizes that the spaciousness, giftedness, transcendence of that time is in the past. Part of me grasps and grasps and grasps, no matter what I profess about nonattachment. What had been intimately close and overwhelmingly holy feels far away. I feel alone again. Isolated. Away from the Center. Literally, aches and pain.

So I find myself railing at the universe this morning, though with particular questions: Why the hell lead me to a contemplative, paperless-musicked, deeply-steeped liturgical community in which I have no opportunity to be involved in the flesh? Why show me a place painted with every symbolic-spirit image of the last four-five years—bride of Christ, tiger, wolf, Friends, dance, and more—then enforce an emptiness, a quiet, for the unforeseeable future? The awareness of St. Gregory of Nyssa Church that has fed an entire week of awe has now become painful to hold, heavy to bear, a pain in the ass. It’s like the Spirit of God took an emaciated, hungering soul, showed it a banquet of incredible bounty, then led it away again. I’m the proverbial kid outside the window of the candy shop. The bounty is too far away. There’s no other place like it I’ve ever seen or experienced. And I’m being told—or at least it seems I’m hearing—“You can’t have any more.”

I’m more than a bit pissy, I guess, not to mention dramatic. I know my soul's not emaciated, for one, but just not getting what it thought it wanted. I know I'm never led away from the Banquet either. In some odd way, it's always before me, before us. Merton was right. But I'm still a bit pissy, knowing the graciousness that’s possible and feeling so far away from it, both at the same time.  Would I really rather not know about it? Of course not. Is it better to know and feel the unbearable yearning as it drives you batty? Of course it is. Is there no grace right here, right now? Of course there is. So…what?! I find myself asking. “What is being asked of me?!? What was all that for?!? Why show me the French Riviera of liturgy, contemplative practice, communal service and then lead me back here to Ohio where I do belong?”

And why introduce me to Sara Miles for a ten-minute, tearful, embarrassing-overwhelm conversation? Why push her to the sacristy for the oil with which she invited my anointing? Why did I allow her to do so? If not for the sense of hands-in-hands, the scent of the oil, it'd be easier to say it was all in my head. I have been aware of her all week but I neither know her nor have any non-freaky way to get to know her. I suspect I’ll find her irritating to boot—a Greenwich Village New Yorker, journalist, post-secularist Jesus-freak, boomer, friend of God whose path leads her to St. Gregory’s every day? No thanks. [Great. Envy raises its ugly head. I actually envy her proximity to the circle. That’s charming.] So the interconnection of Life means we’re already connected, but what does that mean for now? Even were we to correspond, in our overbusy lives, for what purpose? To what end?

So I find myself wanting to know all the irritating foibles and flaws of St. Gregory’s right now. For all it brings into the world, it has to be a real pain in the ass too. It already is from afar. San Francisco’s artsy crowd, gourmet foodies doing good, Episcopalian with all that brings? It has just as much brokenness as any other place. I just cannot see it, know that in sensate detail. Perhaps knowing such things would make me yearn for its liturgical giftedness less?

Nah. Doesn't work like that, thank heavens. Perhaps prayer for the community and its good will nudge me out of bad-temper. :) Regardless...

What I do know in sensate detail is grace beyond measure. I saw and felt in my bones a future in which all my “places in the round” resonated together—the rotunda of the yurt, the rotunda of St. Gregory’s; a circle of Friends (Quakers), a circle of dancing friends; a circle of dance led by Wisdom, a circle of dancing saints, led by Wisdom. I know confirmation in a bread-centered theological way, and have hope of being companioned by those known and unknown along the way. I received invitation into a new liturgical practice of chanting the Psalms, available to me "alongside" St. Gregory’s faithful each weekday morning at 8 a.m./11 a.m. Here I’m learning a radically new-old way of steeping in Scripture, and I’m aware of new significance in practicing “alone” though with a sense of virtual companionship. As ever, my task seems to be learning to hold the heaviness I feel, the weightiness of grace past-received but always present, nonetheless.

As I wrote in the thank-you letter to Sara, to accompany the gift of books, so I write once again: I have learned to say dayenu—or at least am practicing saying dayenu—as grace beyond measure is given. It is always more than enough, even when it’s achingly heavy to sustain, in awareness, for long. Dayenu.