I'm Off To... Liturgical Dance?

Hi everyone! I am just now beginning several months of travel doing concerts and murals, all over the US and a bit in the UK! So, I'm back to the blog to keep you all updated on the cool things that happen, and the unfolding insights and joys that rock my world. Thanks for tuning in.

This morning at the Asilomar Bible Conference I saw a woman (the courageous and expressive Laura LaPoint) do some "liturgical dance". This is a form of worship I have been almost totally unaware of until now. And I have been noticing that the word "liturgical" made me feel like there was something clinical about it, that it wouldn’t be very expressive. But how wrong I was!

In fact, what I found was that I had tears in my eyes because the whole point of this dance was not to be pretty, or perfect, or graceful exactly, but rather, to worship God.Laura explained that the concept of liturgical dance is not about appearance, but rather about accepting all body types, all dance proficiencies, and giving people the opportunity to worship God in the language of dance.

Now, I am all about recognizing that there are lots of languages with which to worship and communicate. In the same way that sometimes body language is more honest than the spoken word, I can see and feel how dance could very well be used to express feelings and convictions that might not be so succinctly expressed in words.

While I watched Laura dance, I could really feel how humble it is, how transparent one must be, in order to get up in front of a congregation and honestly express ones prayer, using the language of movement. In a way, it felt like a challenge to the often heady, intellectual way we often talk about God.

As I considered the many benefits and corners of thought that having dance and movement as part of our sense of communicating with God I wondered this: We are so used to singing together, and that’s just a language – what if we ALL became used to dancing together in our worship? What would that require of us in terms of our willingness to reveal something about ourselves? I could feel almost viscerally how we would have to shed some self consciousnesses that we hold about our bodies.

I could also feel a voice coming up within me, a stiff, complaining voice, that this dance was not dignified. It wasn’t "smart". But really, that was what I was loving about the dance. Communicating with our bodies, in a way can invite us to communicate feeling, not so much intellect, and can enable us to communicate from parts of our being which are often overlooked or not invited to be part of the conversation.

Today I learned about liturgical dance. I think it's a good thing!

And now, for our second hymn, we will all dance together, feeling and sharing our love of God.

Pure, Innocent Love in the Darkest Places

I have served as a volunteer chaplain at a jail in Boston for 6 years. During that time I have seen, beyond a doubt, that the qualities of God are alive and well, living and being lived in these places which would otherwise be very dark. Lots of people, when they go to jail, find themselves face to face with the mistakes they have made and the problems they have, and want very badly to get past them.

A couple of months ago I was talking with a man, we'll call him William, who had had a very sad life so far. He described being raped at the age of 13, drug abuse, friends lost to murder, and the list truly goes on and on. He was relating to me how now that he is in jail, where he can't get any drugs, all the feelings he had been pushing away by using drugs, are coming out. He speaks sincerely, calmly, soberly.

His basic question to me was, "With all these terrible things that have happened to me, how can I be free from these intense feelings of sadness, loss, and grief?" It is easy to see, when you hear him talk, what an honest, kind man this is. So, I began to speak to him about knowing himself as God's creation, not the creation of a human history. We spoke about knowing ourselves as spiritual creations who are defined, not by what we've done humanly, but by God's love for us. I also mentioned that it is useful, when we feel miserable, to turn outward instead of inward – to seek to love and serve someone else, instead of getting stuck on ourselves.

He seemed to a little confused about what I meant, and said, "Oh, do you mean like this?" He went on to tell me this story, without pride. There is another man in this unit – call him Joe. Joe is older and had really let himself go. He was not taking care of himself – long scraggly hair, not showering, finger and toenails long and curling. He was a mess and obviously unhappy. William, feeling sorry for him, asked Joe if he could help him, clean him up. Joe said no, he didn't want to be touched. Rather than take no for an answer, William tried bargaining. In jail each detainee has their "canteen" which is extra food and supplies that one has to buy using their own, usually very limited, money. William asked Joe if he would let him clean him up, cut his finger and toenails, etc., at the cost of a certain number of food items in his canteen. At this Joe said sure.

When William told me this story, I looked over to the couch and saw Joe there, hair and nails cut, shaved, clean face, and a smile on it too. William said, "Is that what you mean by serving others?" honestly wanting to know if that's what I meant.

Tears nearly rolled from my eyes as I said "Yes, William, that's is just what I'm talking about." I quickly told him also that he was teaching me. That is riches of the heart. To desire so much to do an act of kindness to another that one buys the privilege of cleaning up a messy, smelly, surly brother.

In the following weeks as we do our Bible study it is easy to feel the calm respect that exists between Joe and William. Joe's physical cleanliness (which has been maintained!) is a testament to William's tenderness of heart – the compassion of Christ. Also, where he had been surly, Joe now joins us, timidly asking questions about passages in the Bible.

Jesus counseled us to wash one another's feet. Sometimes we think that is for "saints" to do. Seeing this story play out (and many others like it) has shown me that it isn't. Tender acts of forgiveness, generosity, and mercy are happening anywhere someone is willing. I can't imagine someone with a darker human history than William's. Yet, he has demonstrated, beyond doubting, that darkness and human history cannot overcome the desire to love, and to feel the blessing of loving another.

Making Friends with Ideas

Several years into my adventure with art I began to make pictures of a man lying on his back. The image came to me the way images most often do. The images simply comes into thought, or even feels its way into my thought. A good image comes with a feeling of fascination or love or deep meaning. Very often the image comes without my really understanding why I should make it, but with a feeling that I should.

This is what happened with this image of the man lying on his back. When it first came into my thought it came with a feeling of such love and depth that I immediately began to follow that path. Usually when this happens, I explore the image for a while, make a few paintings to figure out what it is and what it means – to learn what it has come to tell me. Then after a while it usually transforms into a different idea or peters out and a new idea takes its place.

In this case, however, the image became stronger and stronger to me as I worked on it. My fascination with it grew and my desire to explore it was undiminished. After a year I found myself just as in love with this image as I was when it first came. In that time though, I had discovered some of its identity. It told me some stories about itself, what it meant, and what it was saying. The paintings continued to come out. For another year, and then another, and even another! It was so clear to me that he was teaching me about things very spiritual - things that were beyond my knowledge. He didn’t come speaking in words, but just in feelings and ideas. And those were things I could understand way down deep.

For about 4 years I worked with this image. The man lying on his back became to me the sleeper, the dreamer, the soul, the innocent – on and on! My understanding and love for him grew. At one point I was struck by the fact that I was having a relationship with an idea. This idea had come unsolicited. Then, when I was interested in it and explored, the idea shared new ideas with me. There was back and forth, like a conversation.

This was like a bolt of lightning. Don't friends need to be… people? But here, I have a friend and it is not a person. It is an idea. From this friendship I am being made stronger, more sensitive. My life is richer for it. I feel actual real love because of it. Yet, this is relationship is not with a person.

But, as I let the idea unfold in me further, I came to the resolution that made me thank God. It was this: in fact, all my friendships are with ideas! There is not a difference between my friendship with this idea and my friendship with a person! I am simply surrounded by ideas. My interaction with ideas is what creates my life, gives me joy, causes me to progress.

So, the gift of the man lying on his back is a spiritual gift from the Infinite Good just as are my many friendships with people. They all are surprising to me. They all cause me to grow, force me to get better, show me my need of God, show me His glory, color, fascination.

We are surrounded by ideas!

How Can We Be Made New?

In order to live our way successfully from the now into the next we must conceive of ourselves as being on a journey. We must see ourselves as being on a robust and demanding road that leads from what we have known, into what we don't yet know.

Certainly, if any of us were setting out on a trip like this we would want to bring with us all the best tools. We would bring appropriate clothing, supplies, food, money – all the things we could think of. And in this metaphor that means bringing with us all the best ideas we have. Best practices, best spiritual insights, best models of behavior, best qualities.

The wonderful thing about being on a journey with God is that in addition to all the tools we bring with us, God is always giving us brand new tools that fit perfectly with the needs we encounter along the way. The Bible quotes God as saying "Behold, I make all things new". We must be willing to accept that new ideas will come to us, and they will be God's provision for our journey.

As a kid growing up in a Christian Science Sunday School I didn't relate to the music in church. It wasn't speaking a language I understood. I couldn't get anything from it. (Thankfully, as an adult I have come to see and feel its goodness and utility much, much more!) So, several years ago it was a deep delight (and surprise!) to me, to find that my creative world was revealing to me that I could create music that would speak about the deepest and best spiritual ideas I knew of, AND include the best, most expressive musical and poetic ideas I could arrive at. It was a revelation. Just as language evolves naturally over time so must our expressions of church and spirituality.

I have come to see that this is not a choice. It is God who makes all things new. It is not we who get to choose whether or not to make one or two things new. It is God who makes them ALL new.

When I began making this music I thought, like everyone else who heard it, that it would be the youth who would most get into it. But, in the following years of performances it was fascinating to see that what was really happening was very different. In fact, the most powerful responses that I have come across have been from an older group of folks who were LONGING (and some didn’t even know it!) for the beloved ideas of the Bible to be expressed in a new way. It has been moving to me to see and feel the way this music has found some people – like water in a parched land. The journey began with one thought, but revealed a different success along the way.

One of the realities of being an artist is that you have an idea you know is good, and then you have to show others why it's good. Sometimes people think it's actually bad, only because it is new! Anyone bringing a heartfelt new idea sometimes finds themselves in that case. But it's good because it causes us all to be patient and demonstrate new love for our ideas, willingness to stand for what we truly believe in, and learn unselfishness.

How do we know which new ideas will be useful and which won't? We can only do our best. Just as in music there are songs we remember from decades past, and countless others we don't. Mary Baker Eddy says that "sincerity is more successful than genius or talent." We must be sincere, and sacrifice ego and opinion for the sake of recognizing the new, holy ideas that God is providing.

How Can I Feel Connected With God When I Don't Feel Connected With God?!

In my mind the answer to this question is simple, but not necessarily easy. The simple answer is to take up your cross, as all Christians have been directed to do, and deny yourself. Simple, but not necessarily easy.

But, denying ourselves should become a normal, very normal, activity. "Self" has come to mean to me, any voice or impulsion I hear in my head or heart, that makes me think of my being as a separate self. It's this sense of life that makes us do and feel all the bad things we do and feel – fear, hatred, greed, loathing, shyness, lust… the list goes on and on.

So, to deny yourself doesn’t mean to keep yourself from doing things you love, or from having good, it just means denying the inclination to think of your being as a separate self – apart from the Whole.

The feeling of being unconnected with God is an outcome of indulging the materialistic inclination to conceive of ourselves as separate, distinct beings, existing somehow apart from the Whole, or God. So, Jesus counsel to us to "deny" ourselves, does not mean what we are often led to believe it means. It is simply to deny in our hearts this inclination that we have to believe that we are meaningless, separate things, wandering around a Loveless universe.

A big part of the problem here is believing that how we "feel" is what tells us who we are. For example, if I feel separate from God, then I am separate from God. However, my experience with feeling and prayer is that I don't have to live with a feeling that is not progressive. We get so used to thinking that our feelings are us, that we begin to find it impossible to defy them. We believe that they rule us. This is a basic problem and to reverse it we have to go to the root of it. Our passing, human feelings are not us.

Denying our "selves", though at first blush seems to be a very uncomfortable activity, and maybe very hard, in fact, yields a much more consistent sense of happiness, security, and meaning. To me it is taking the blockage off of the naturally flowing spring of good ideas, happiness, and inspiration that is flowing right out of the middle of each one of us. We can't just deny self and stop there. We have to reach out to goodness, to God, to the Whole.

Today as I was working to deny myself with regards to an interpersonal thing that has been hurting me I remembered this story:

A donkey fell to the bottom of a deep pit a man was digging for a well. When the man saw that this had happened he was very sorry and sad because he saw no way to get the donkey out. The hole was too deep and the donkey too heavy. He could think of nothing to do but fill in the hole and start over. The unfortunate donkey would die.

But, as the man began to throw shovel-full after shovel-full of dirt down the well he soon had a smile on his face. He watched as the dirt fell down the hole and landed on the donkey's back. Each time this happened, the donkey shook the dirt off his back and it feel to the ground beneath him. With each and every shovel-full of dirt that was hurled down the hole, the donkey shook it off, and little by little the hole began to fill in under him. After much labor by the man, and much patient dirt-shaking by the donkey, the hole became so shallow that the donkey climbed up and out of it.

So it is with us. The world, our feelings, our swirling thoughts of fear and spite and dislike all throw dirt down on us, and we feel as though we were at the bottom of a dark pit, and that our fate has been decided for us. But, it is not so. Each and every time we shake off the dirt, again and again – each time we throw off those feelings and instead reach out to God, goodness, unselfishness, we are transformed, and we are naturally lifted out of the hole.

As we do this, the whole assumption of self, which seems so normal to us, is little by little washed away. We are less easily hurt. We have more buoyancy. We are less easily convinced that we could be separate from God, good.

Usefulness

When I look in my heart I see that one of the strongest desires I feel – maybe the strongest – is to be useful. I want to feel that I am playing a part in existence. I have found over the years that this desire can be fulfilled in lots of ways. Sometimes it is by serving someone, or working on a project with others. When I see that we are making progress on something that will help someone else, I feel useful. But, sometimes I see that desire being fulfilled when I am making art, or writing a song, or even simply walking around my neighborhood.

The one constant between all those activities is a feeling of engagement in something real. It isn't always something that has to do with others. But it is always something that is engaged with an idea that feels real. I speculate that the reason I want to feel useful, is maybe an even deeper desire to feel real. Maybe an existential desire to have the reality of my being substantiated.

On the other side of the coin, some of the worst times are times when I have not felt useful. That feeling has been so oppressive sometimes that I have thought long and hard about how to alleviate it.

One interesting thing is that, just like loneliness can't be quenched with endless socializing, the desire for usefulness can't be quenched with jobs and work. I have learned that, at least for myself, I feel the best, not when I am seeking work to do, but when I am digging deep in thought, striving to hear what my life is telling me to do at the deepest levels.

Surely there is endless work out there that we can do to be useful in the world. But it seems we have an innate desire to do the work that is right for us to be doing. We want to have a sense that our existence isn't arbitrary, and instead that our skills and inclinations are pointing somewhere.

I began to have the sense that I could avoid that feeling of uselessness, not by filling my life with activities, but rather, by thinking and feeling as deeply as I could about the usefulness of life. And then those thoughts and feelings were so real-feeling that I began to see that just doing that was useful.

These days if ever I am feeling useless or disengaged, I try to engage my thoughts in the deep things of life. I pray and engage with depth, to push out that empty feeling.

Then, very often (and always if I stick with it) those thoughts and explorations of depth open into what I think of as spiritual reality. I find myself having new ideas that I have never had before. I find myself exploring and listening to new inspirations. These always lead to further engagement in real life – both in thought, and in the world. And the work is never done!

Is Your Life A Mess?

Is your life a mess?

Has it ever been?

I hope so.

I'm talking about break-ups, mistakes, upheavals, problems, bad decisions, and all the rest of the dramas and difficulties.

Messiness makes us learn. It opens up places in us that we likely wouldn't have explored if things hadn't gotten so messy.

Why am I bringing this up? Because I observe a fear in the world that sometimes creeps into us – a fear of being messy. I want to expose and talk about this fear because it is so dangerous to health and happiness.

This fear draws our attention away from the things it should be on – learning, growing, living deeply, and puts it on appearances. The longer we indulge this fear, the less likely we are to try something new, be willing to learn, or admit a mistake. Ultimately, the fear of being messy causes us to become rigid and cease to progress.

Messes happen in our lives when we encounter the results of a bad decision or false assumption. The only way to really avoid messes is to be perfect. But, of course, humans do make mistakes and have false assumptions. They are not perfect. In fact, the only way to become more perfect, is to reveal the perfection of God within.

Messes are great for that! Often messes are so uncomfortable that they force us to be honest with ourselves in ways we never thought we could. That honesty is great for revealing God's goodness in us. Messes are the mistake revealing itself, and our opportunity to correct them. They are nothing to fear! We serve ourselves (and others!) so much better when we cease to care about appearances, and instead, are only interested in learning our mistake and fixing it.

The danger is when we are so afraid of being messy, or appearing messy, that we would rather not learn about the mistake. Then we put off honesty, we delay integrity, and we pay for it later. The sensibility that fears a mess is actually a frame of mind that subtly assumes that life is material – that what you see is what you get. This mindset feels safe in its situation, and wants to keep things how they are - at the expense of growth and humility. But, that materialistic mindset is not safe in its situation. Sooner or later, that deferred honesty, the delayed integrity erupts in the life and creates a much larger mess than it would have been had it been addressed in the first place.

The kind of honesty that saves us from this holds the bar high. It's not always easy. In fact, the only way to truly not fear these messes erupting in our lives is to feel more of God's consistency and goodness as the real constants in our lives.

Certainly messes for their own sake are useless. And once we have learned a particular lesson, there is no reason to have to learn it again. But, if my life is to be one of continued learning, then I am sure to continue to make mistakes as the things I am learning become more advanced and subtle. In short, a life well-lived will be full of mistakes! It will also be much more full of good decisions, victories, and powerful living that is based on all the insights gained through resolving problems and cleaning up messes. The outward messes become less and less scary because through our living we learn that our home, our security is not so much in our outward situation, but in our unchanging connection to God.

Is a mess-less life the Christian ideal? Absolutely not. Outwardly Jesus Christ had a messy life. He was consistently in conflict with others. He was in trouble with the law and had pretty pronounced conflicts with members of his family and community. What about other heroes? Any one worth his or her salt had messes. Probably some big ones. Jesus said "I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." I understand this to mean that Jesus calls us to follow him, and that in doing so, our messes will be revealed, and cleaned up. Not that we will just BE mess-less!

Living the ideals of Christianity (love, spirituality, forgiveness, purity, courage, etc.) cleanses our lives of the causes of messes – selfishness, dishonesty, fear. But the process of living those ideals is very often not a smooth road. And that's just fine.

Let's be honest with ourselves! The Bible tells us over and over that the effect of God is to overturn all that is wrong. Christ says "I am not come to bring peace to the earth, but a sword." We have nothing to fear from God, Love, though God's action in our lives is sometimes to overturn our wrong assumptions and mistakes. It is always for our own good, and brings healing and peace much faster than any other approach to life. We must admit our mistakes and correct them. We must humbly accept the chastening that life brings to us, and work our way through it, becoming better. This is the way that we most quickly pass through them, learn the lessons of life and love, and never return to those messes. Then, we are ever onward to new and greater labors and loves.