We Can Dance If We Want To
On this Tenth Day of Christmas, with its “ten lords a-leapin’” (and yesterday’s “nine ladies dancing”), I cannot help but think of dancing. Not purely because I need the exercise to burn off the extra pounds accumulated during these past few weeks, but because I have been thinking a lot lately about how movement - some might even call it “dance” - is so woven into our liturgical traditions and expressions of worship.
I know what you may be thinking: “If you want dancing during worship, look to our more charismatic brothers and sisters in the Body of Christ; that’s more ‘their thing.’” I would say two things in response to that. One, not so fast. Sit towards the back of a Sunday service at St. Martin’s and watch our congregation bow during the procession, make the sign of the cross repeatedly, genuflect, kneel, stand and kneel some more, and tell me it doesn’t look a little bit like we’re dancing in our worship. Second, I would say, we all tend to incorporate movement into worship because we are embodied creatures. It’s like we can’t help it. We are physically reacting as much as we are offering to God. When humans engage in something as meaningful as worship - individually and corporately - our bodies cement what we are directing towards God. We are participating in a Divine dance of sorts.
Last month, I was in a class with the Rev. Dr. Mona West, a professor at the Iona School for Ministry and Director of Adult Christian Formation at St. David’s Episcopal in Austin, TX. To give us a “brain break,” she invited all of us to stand and join her in a prayerful chant with movement. Trying to keep an open mind about something I was admittedly skeptical about, I joined the rest of the class. Dr. West led us in a beautiful sung chant with simple movements:
“Let go, let go, let go some more. Let go of everything. God is all.
Come in, come in, come in some more. Come in, I welcome you. God is all.”
Although she invited us to close our eyes, for a moment, I peeked. Around the room I saw more than a dozen adults moving - dancing - in simple worship. I wondered if an outsider might have seen us and thought something like what Michal in 2 Samuel 6:16-22 thought when she saw David “leaping and dancing before the Lord.” If you want to learn the chant and movements we did, check out this video of Dr. West (chant starts at around 2:10). Go ahead - you can dance if you want to. It may just be the outlet to Christ’s peace and joy you’ve been looking for.
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