I
first learned to dance in an etiquette class in 6th Grade. We learned the Box Step (1-2-3-4). We were instructed where to place our hands
and where not to place our hands, as well as how close but no closer we could
be to our partner. Every year our Youth
Group had a square dance. Here I learned
how to allemande left with the lady on my left and the Virginia Reel. This is the end of my formal dance
training. I can do the YMCA (who
can’t?), but not the Macarena. Every now,
if I have some music on, I cut loose in my kitchen while making dinner, but at
moments like this I am grateful I live alone.
My
aunt and uncle’s Saturday schedule revolved precisely around watching The Lawrence Welk Show. They commented constantly and critically on the
dancers and their outfits. It is hard fathom
how at the same time our culture produced Elvis Presley and his gyrating
hips. I think back over movies and
moments that transformed dancing in my lifetime: Saturday Night Fever, Grease,
Flashdance, Dirty Dancing, Michael Jackson’s Moon Walk, and Left Shark at the
Super Bowl. Today, Dancing with the Stars is a cultural phenomena with millions of
passionate followers.
After
I moved into town my first introduction to Suffolk life was the 2007 Shrimpfest. Terry and Irma Mottley were there and at one
point with the music playing they broke into a shag. I can still picture it in my mind. They seemed so free and connected and
graceful at ease with one another and in love.
It reminded me of something a seminary professor once told me. She teaches pastoral theology and from time
to time does marital counseling. She
advises couples in distress to sign up for dance lessons. In her experience, if they are not willing to
engage in this intimate and vulnerable activity there is little chance
counseling sessions will save their marriage.
Dancing
has been around for a long time. Social
theorists believe well before we honed our verbal skills early human beings
used dancing as a method of communicating with one another. The earliest record of dancing is found in a
cave painting in India. Dating back
9,000 years, it depicts a celebration after a successful hunt. Dancing seems to be an important element in
every religious tradition in our world.
Some Episcopal churches incorporate what is known as liturgical dancing
in their services, but, as a friend of mine once opined, “When it comes to
liturgical dancing, less really is more.”
In today’s first reading we find King David
dancing before the Lord “with all his might”.
He and the people are celebrating the return of the Ark of the Covenant
to Jerusalem after it had been lost in battle to the Philistines. Most likely his dancing is not akin to the
highly choreographed dancing of Viennese Waltz, but a spontaneous, free-form,
energetic expression of passion and joy.
It is what basketball players do when they nail a game winning shot at
the buzzer and baseball players do when they hit a walk off homerun and soccer
fans do when their team wins the World Cup.
Jumping up and down and screaming at the top of your lungs may not seem
like much of a dance, but it does combine movement and celebration. Outside of perhaps the Pentecostal church
tradition, we people of faith in the Christian west do not dance like this in
religious settings and ceremonies. If I
broke loose with leaping, shouting, and dancing in today’s service, you all
would give me the same look David’s wife gave him and call the bishop.
Years ago I attended a service at a Charismatic
Episcopal Church where we were directed to stand, raise our hands to the Lord,
and sing “with all our might”. Those of
us who did not raise our hands were chastised for being “stumps”, not “trees” –
raised arms being the limbs. Then and
there I discovered I do not come to worship to be drawn out of myself – to be
released from constrictions so I can let it all out in an emotional outpouring
– but rather I seek a kind of worship that draws me inward to a place where I
can hear the still, small voice of God’s Spirit speaking to my deepest
concerns, sorrows, hopes, and joys. I
don’t despise the David’s in this world who let go when they worship God, but
it is not me and it is not what I need from this experience.
Today’s gospel reading describes a different kind
of dancing. This one is not religious in
nature, but rather erotic. By all
accounts, King Herod is a foolish and brutal ruler. What sort of father asks his teenage daughter
to dance provocatively for him and his male guests? His taxation policy squeezes the life out of
the Galilean region in order to build his palaces and support his sumptuous
lifestyle. His powers are many and broad
and he wields them arbitrarily for his own benefit to the detriment of others.
Herod’s daughter Herodias appears to have only
one source of power – her sexuality.
Like most young women, she realizes she has the ability to manipulate
men with her beauty and her body well before she discovers what she wants to do
with her power. As such, she is in a
vulnerable position. She has the ability
to hurt others and most likely she will be hurt multiple times in her life by
using this power.
I dated a young woman in college who told me her
secret to getting an A in an economics class of over 100 students. The professor knew none of us by name and
surely never took the time to read our papers word for word. Our final grades seemed arbitrary at
best. This young woman figured out how
to break through. First, she always dressed
up and wore a skirt to class. Next, she
sat in the front row and paid attention.
She intended to catch the professor’s eye, but he still didn’t know her
name. One day, after class, she
approached him to ask for the name of a book and author he referenced during
the lecture. Then, at the final, she
wrote on the top corner of her paper a note in red ink: “Thank you for
directing me to the author and name of the book.” Because she connected her paper with her face
she got an A and deserved it. The
professor was unwilling to do the actual work of reading papers and assigning
grades based on merit so he opened himself to being played, although nowhere
near as badly as Herod.
This week I asked a few women about their
experience of using the power of their sexuality. I learned it can be effective, but also is
fraught with peril. Our society is not
much help. Either we encourage women to
flaunt their power to the fullest, or we attempt to shame and suppress it - think
about the churches that ban dancing and the religious traditions requiring
women to cover their bodies. The example
of the mother seems to play a key role in shaping the practices of the daughter
– how to dress and how not to, how to act and how not to. More than anything else, if a woman’s only
power is her ability to use her looks and her sexuality to get what she wants
from men, she is opening herself to a lifetime of pain.
History does not record any other details of
Herodias’ life, just this dance and the role it plays in a gruesome and
unnecessary execution. Sadly for her, it
is an auspicious beginning to her formative years and it strains the imagination
to conceive who might have guided her from viewing herself as being only a seductive
object in the eyes of men to an authentic human being deeply and dearly loved
by God our Creator.
When she was five, we enrolled our daughter Abbey
in a dance class at her daycare. Like
all such things, there came the day for a recital, with its obligatory stopping
of the world for every relative in the same time zone to attend… and
videotape. Most of the routines were
cute, uncomplicated, and somewhat mechanical.
At one point the instructor told us it was time for a freeform dance
where the girls move to music in anyway they desire. At this point, in my eyes at least, the most
amazing thing happened. It was as if
Abbey connected to some deep inner place allowing her soul and her body’s
sinews to interact with the holy and mysterious rhythms of life. She appeared free of conscious restriction as
she flowed and drifted with the music; no longer concerned about the steps and
stops of the previous dances, just her body and soul’s relationship with the
music. It was incredibly beautiful,
deeply spiritual, and a moment I will cherish forever. It is for me a witness to what all life can
and should be.
Jesus never actually said “I am the Lord of the
Dance,” but I bet he wished he had. Life
definitely is a dance. Sometimes it
looks like the awkwardness of a 6th grader’s box step. Other times, such as when we pass the peace,
it feels like the joyful interaction of the Virginia Reel. There are moments of spontaneous joy and
celebration. And there are times of
rare, fleeting, and precious sacred connection and expression.
Dance, then, wherever you
may be,
for I am the Lord of the
Dance said he.
