Practicing Domesticity: Theology of Dance?

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Theology of Dance?

This evening was Spring Formal for Westmont. I did not attend. I have not attended a single dance during my time at Westmont, except for the orientation line dance freshman year. I am not a fan of dances. Dancing? That's a whole different matter. I do actually enjoy dancing (ballerina, cheerleader - it happens), but I just prefer it to be organized. Michelle captures some of my feelings:

Looking good, ladies

"April 16. Spring formal. My first and last one (unless I become a cougar and date a younger Westmont boy...so I shouldn't make any promises). Spring formal got me really excited for the eschaton. Sometimes I have serious posts (I think I had one other serious one--Blender's day). This is one of them. I went up top in the Doubletree and looked down at the dance floor for quite a while, just watching the dance. It reminded me of how we'll dance in the New Jerusalem, to songs that glorify not sex or women's bodies, but our king. We'll raise those same hands--and yet, different, eschatological hands--to glorify God and not drinks. We'll be clothed in fine clothes, just as we were at Spring formal, but these will be white robes of righteousness we only obtain through Jesus' sacrifice. We'll be seated at tables--at the banquet feast of the Lamb. A week from April 16 is April 23--Saturday. Does April 23 make any impact on how we see April 16? April 23, 2011 is Holy Saturday, which commemorates Jesus' day in the ground, dead. April 23, 2010 was the day on which my Oma had a stroke and began to die. And yet, in the midst of this death something changed. Something changed 2000 years ago, and that change affects the death 1 year ago. This isn't it. We are young and full of life and excitement and festivity, but that life is eternal. And because we know that, when we "party like it's the end of the world," it has different meaning for us. We are transformed, being transformed, and will be transformed. I've talked with a lot of people about these dances--Paul, Josh, Kat, Beth, Brad--and I'm still thinking through them. I think they evidence the change that has begun in us, although that change is definitely incomplete. So, Spring formal was good. I'm glad I went. And yet, it was a shadow. Soon and very soon."

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What I Learned From My Mother

by Julia Kasdorf

I learned from my mother how to love

the living, to have plenty of vases on hand

in case you have to rush to the hospital

with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants

still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars

large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole

grieving household, to cube home-canned pears

and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins

and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point.

I learned to attend viewing even if I didn’t know

the deceased, to press the moist hands

of the living, to look in their eyes and offer

sympathy, as though I understood loss even then.

I learned that whatever we say means nothing,

what anyone will remember is that we came.

I learned to believe I had the power to ease

awful pains materially like an angel.

Like a doctor, I learned to create

from another’s suffering my own usefulness, and once

you know how to do this, you can never refuse.

To every house you enter, you must offer

healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself,

the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.

Source: Sleeping Preacher (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992)

Alone

by Maya Angelou

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

The Silence

by Wendell Berry

Though the air is full of singing
my head is loud
with the labor of words.

Though the season is rich
with fruit, my tongue
hungers for the sweet of speech.

Though the beech is golden
I cannot stand beside it
mute, but must say

"It is golden," while the leaves
stir and fall with a sound
that is not a name.

It is in the silence
that my hope is, and my aim.
A song whose lines

I cannot make or sing
sounds men's silence
like a root. Let me say

and not mourn: the world
lives in the death of speech
and sings there.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Theology of Dance?

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