8.15.08 No Other Hands
"Dancing heals our bodies, our communities, and the earth." Emily offered this possibility to a small group who bravely came out to the Villa Maria Retreat Center for an entire weekend of dancing. Out on the lawn, in a lovely round room, and around an eleven-circuit labyrinth, we danced ancient, earth-centered dances, all in circles, all holding hands. Together we were explored prayer danced not in solitude but in community--we needed each other to make the dance happen. Most of the dances were pre-Christian, some with a Christian overlay, and they all were women's dances that preserve a fertile, reverent manner of being in the world. By repeating these steps, we recreated a very old way of relating to each other and nature.
In our conversations about the healing properties of these dances, one Catholic sister reminded us, "We ARE the earth." We are the earth's only means of dancing. We are meant to dance; by gathering in communities, holding hands, and creating this common prayer, we are fulfilling the earth's potential.
Her comment reminded me of my favorite quote from Teresa of Avila:
Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours,
Yours are the eyes through which is to look out Christ's compassion to the world
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good;
Yours are the hands with which he is to bless men now.
The earth has no dancers but us, no means of holding hands except through us, no way of teaching our interconnectedness and interdependence with plants and creatures and sky and cycles except through us. One woman said to me, "Have you ever noticed that it's almost impossible to dislike someone while you're dancing with them?" All of the dances massaged the ground and pumped the earth's energy up, into our bodies and our circle. Each dance provides a form which, much like any faith tradition, has withstood the test of time as a worthy container for holding and honoring the Sacred. Dancing these forms, I experienced them as an extension of the natural order--a way to remember how thoroughly of the earth I am. Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
If you're interested in learning more about circle dancing, go to www.twincircles.org.
6.18.08: In-Between Places
In Celtic spirituality, "thin places" are those landmarks--the cairn on a hill, the ancient oak--where the veil between this world and the next is slight. These are holy spots where generations have felt viscerally the spirit-world's nearness and reconnected to the soul's journey. Lest this sound too pagan for your tastes, I'd argue that Christianity is rife with thin places: Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Chartres Cathedral in France, Sanctuario de Chimayo in New Mexico, Mont Sant Michel, Taize, Iona...even, in its own humble way, Prospect Park United Methodist Church. Over time, people have journeyed to these sites, prayed, and returned home changed.
I'm convinced that, just as in-between places exist on our geographical landscape, in-between moments exist on our journey through time and serve a similar, "thin" role in our spiritual development. I vividly remember the months after a fire destroyed all my belongings; I'd just moved, and the move coupled with the loss of my almost every possession thrust me into an in-between time of grief, of trying to remember who I was, of searching for the new me on this side of a loss. While that period was wrenching, it was also formative. With hindsight I can see how vulnerable I was, stripped of everything familiar, and how grief opened my being. That in-between time exposed my raw self to God's raw self. The person who scrambled out of the ashes was profoundly different.
I recognized this liminal state in Emily as she was enduring cancer treatments; I see it in clients when they lose loved-ones or go through a divorce or take huge career risks. I suspect Prospect Park UMC has entered an in-between place this summer as we say goodbye to one pastor and greet another, and as we let go of our old sanctuary configuration for the sake of new possibilities. We're taking a pilgrimage together to a thin place. The trip is rough; it means leaving home behind, it means moving forward without knowing the outcome, it means traversing an emotional landscape that we usually avoid. But the trip can open us. In our vulnerability, God can touch and shape us in powerful ways. While it's darned uncomfortable to be neither here nor there, now is the time when mystery reaches through the veil to infuse us with new life. Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
5.15.08 The Quit Impulse
The quit impulse--we all know it. The United Methodist Church upholds the ruling that clergy can deny congregants membership for being gay? I quit. Prospect Park UMC is ripping out half the pews? I quit. Our pastor is leaving after three short years? Well, then, I will too. There are a thousand good reasons for quitting an institution as flawed as the church. Shall I name a few? The appointment system which strips congregations of their self-determination, the patriarchy which perpetuates domineering images of God and unhealthy governing bodies, rampant homophobia, exasperating committee work... Need I go on? I don't blame anyone for jumping ship.
Each fresh injustice triggers in me the quit impulse-- I'm out of here! Anger, impatience, self-righteousness, fear, and despair grab the upper hand and faith, for a time, disappears. I'm glad for these emotions, I even wallow in them, because they inform me of my moral bearings. They reflect my deep engagement with life. If I was complacent or uninvested, I wouldn't care.
But each time I feel the quit impulse I must discipline myself to enter a period of discernment. While quitting a relationship is appropriate if it is abusive or no longer life-giving, quitting because of human foibles and institutional malfunctions and the angry impulse to show them often solves nothing. Individuals will always disappoint. Institutions will always malfunction. The poor we will always have with us. While other churches look golden, they're not. Ditching religion entirely brings its own problems. If my body and spirit aren't being damaged, I must discern instead where God is working in this mess. I must return to faith.
Faith, as I understand it, is not blind trust that everything will work out or that the authorities know best. They most certainly don't. In adverse times, God asks of us a proactive faith which may include quitting the church but never means quitting the journey. God calls us into deeper trust in ourselves, our community, and a love far greater than us. What is solid here? What is sustaining? Our innate sense of justice. The slow work of social change. Friendships across years. The daily practice of opening our hearts. The challenge of inclusive welcome. This journey is hard, hard, hard. I'm grateful to you, my companions on the journey, and to our faithful God. --Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
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4.15.08 One Person's Trash, God's Opportunity
Monday morning: The recycling truck already lumbered down the alley at daybreak, and now the garbage truck tips bin after bin of neighborhood waste into its bowels. In our attempts to be environmentally conscious, Emily and I throw
away as little as possible. Our first steps were easy enough--we composted the food scraps, recycled whatever the city picks up, and donated used items to thrift stores. The next layer of reduction took more effort. We eliminated non-recyclable yogurt containers by making our own. We wash plastic bags, reuse them, and recycle them at the coop--a thankless task. We've finally gotten in the habit of bringing our own bags when shopping. On average, we throw away three gallons of garbage each week. Not bad.
Of course there's yet another layer to consider: our carbon emissions from driving and from energy use in the house; the environmental impact of our investments; the waste inherent in the production of our food and in our long-distance travel. It's nigh impossible to live lightly on the earth, given our lifestyle. We fail again and again.
Years ago, I blithely and ignorantly let the city cart my trash away with nary a thought. But this morning, garbage truck rumbling behind the house, I must own up to both my trash and my failure. I must say, "This is MY waste. I will take up this much of the landfill. This is MY oil that's leaked from the car into the groundwater." In other words, I must embrace the full ramifications of my actions, both good and bad.
Sound like a confession? Sure enough. Rather than deny our capacity for evil, spiritual seekers must learn to claim negative emotions as inherent to our humanness. Our broken qualities, if we own them, can be opportunities to grow in our capacity to love. We're each given a choice between death and life, and can't choose life without allowing ourselves the alternative. Thus each trash day is a chance to face our imperfections, our infinite capacity to hurt the world, and to choose life instead--again and again.
--Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
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3.15.08 The Gift of Worship Part 2
I'm almost asleep, drifting into that safe, semiconscious current, when Emily says, "I have a rebuttal to your last Prospectus article."
Oh?
"Worship is God's gift to the people, not the other way around."
No wonder I lie awake thinking of such things.
These days, Emily's primary form of worship is circle dance. A community gathers around a centerpiece with a candle as a reminder of sacred presence, and moves together using both ancient and contemporary forms. The dance is a vessel. When it's an old dance, it holds the culture from which it emerged, the abiding, traditional wisdom of the people who created and sustained it, and the passage of time which links us to back them. When the dance is new, it holds humanity's continuing and evolving engagement with holiness. The community moves into these forms, embodying this vessel. When we hold hands in a circle with the flame at our center, we invite the Spirit to fill us.
And sometimes, rarely, it does. Or perhaps it does all the time and sometimes, rarely, we notice. The feeling of worship--the sensation of connection, of inspiration, of being nurtured at our core--is sheer gift. We can't make it happen. All we can do is show up. Together we practice becoming a vessel, and whether or not the Spirit pours in, this act of faith has value. By showing up, we position ourselves in relationship to a generous universe. We open our hearts to a Mystery beyond the limits of consciousness. We depend on one another to form this vessel, and so we remember our interconnectedness.
Of course Emily is right. Everything is gift--the existence of our forms of worship, whatever they are; the coming together of our communities; the rare, beautiful moments when we well up with love. Worship is relationship, where we both give and receive. Worship is the practice of being present.
Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
If interested in learning more about Sacred Circle Dance, go to www.twincircles.org
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2.15.08 The Gift of Worship Part 1
The prevailing wisdom at Iona Abbey in Scotland is that "worship is primarily for God's pleasure and is a gift which should be offered with integrity." In my ongoing quest to understand what worship is and why it's important, I need to sit with this idea. What might worship as a gift to God look like?
Bear with me as I spin out a scenario. Instead of my driving to church with an ultimatum--worship better feel nurturing or else!--I might steer through the twisty Prospect Park streets considering what I might offer the Holy One. The acolyte would light the candles with awareness that the flame is our symbol of God's abiding presence. The choir might strive for harmonic beauty not as a performance or to showcase talent but to please God. The person leading the children's sermon wouldn't be as concerned with educating our little ones as with augmenting children's natural capacity to celebrate life. Likewise the preacher might not offer the sermon to prod or educate the congregation, but rather to illuminate God's being so we might worship that much more. We would sing our hymns heartily and as musically as possible to facilitate God's pleasure. Our language, particularly the language of our unison prayers, would "have integrity", meaning each individual and the whole community would speak the words from the heart.
As a congregation, the gift we can offer God is different when we're together than when we're praying alone in our bedrooms. We offer God the gift of community, of people trying their best to be in relationship to one another. So I might enter the front doors of church with more humility. For me to give God my best, I need these people.
Perhaps this is an ideal picture. But so often our thinking bounces around the closed box of our humanity. If worship is our gift to God, we've got to open that box. Worship isn't about us. This work, this weekly ritual, is about our attending our relationship with divinity. Such reverence doesn't ask that we're always serious or well-behaved or formally dressed; it asks that we be fully ourselves, and attend to the One who is beyond us.
Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
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