Taking It to the Streets

. . . to St. Clair and Snelling in St. Paul to be exact!

As I think most readers of The Wild Reed would know, I'm part of the Twin Cities-based Catholic Coalition for Church Reform (CCCR) - an independent coalition of reform-minded individuals and groups dedicated to "facilitating courageous and honest dialogue; assuring full participation of all the baptized in the life of the church; promoting justice and reconciliation within the church; exploring Christian/Catholic identity; and bearing witness to the unity of all people of good will while valuing diversity." Accordingly, CCCR is committed to aligning church practices and culture with the gospel message of love, as we believe that such alignment will realize "a church fully alive, locally and universally, that radiates Jesus' core teaching of radical equality, unabashed inclusivity, and transforming love."

Although CCCR is not officially recognized by the clerical leadership of the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis, a major upcoming event within the local church that is undoubtedly generating much excitement is CCCR's September 18 Synod of the Baptized: "Claiming Our Place at the Table."

Yesterday, my friend (and fellow CCCR co-chair) Paula Ruddy and I visited the corner of Snelling and St. Clair in St. Paul to view CCCR's first billboard - one that features the beautiful artwork of Ansgar Holmberg. For the next six weeks this billboard will not only serve to get the word out about both CCCR and its 2010 Synod, but let hundreds of thousands know that there are Catholics who love and are concerned enough about their church to work to reform and renew it. And what that all comes down to is the sharing of a much needed message of hope in our church today.





To learn more about CCCR and Synod 2010, see the following (chronologically-ordered) Wild Reed posts:
The Catholic Coalition for Church Reform
Many Voices, One Church
"Something Exciting and Joyous"
Preparing to Claim Our Place at the Table
CCCR Responds to Censure by Chancery
An Exciting Endeavor
A New Phase
The Spirit of Pentecost is Very Much Alive in the Church of St. Paul-Minneapolis

See also the following Progressive Catholic Voice posts:
In What Sense Are We Progressive Catholics? - An Offering for Reflection and Discussion
CCCR Work/Study Groups Underway
CCCR's 2010 Synod: A Progress Report
Chancery Issues Statement on CCCR
CCCR Responds to Censure by Chancery
A Point of View
CCCR's 2010 Synod: A Second Progress Report
Let Our Voices Be Heard!
Rosemary Radford Ruether on Creating a Liberating Church (Part 1)
Rosemary Radford Ruether on Creating a Liberating Church (Part 2)

Quote of the Day

[T]he Vatican bureaucracy is the first and last line of defense for the hierarchical model of the church. It always made people stand in line, of course, for any permissions they sought and it treated with cobwebbed methods the assault of the sex abuse scandal on its badly breached defenses. It now deals with that . . . unaware that by their passivity these bureaucrats are strangling the institutional church to death. Their careers, of course, depend on their not relaxing their grip for an instant.

They also sponsor investigations, as of the American nuns who built the church and get little credit for it. They issue new regulations that haphazardly pair child abuse with ordaining women priests. Now certain officials are planning to question the visionaries of Medjugorie about exactly what was in those messages from the Blessed Mother. All this is happening while victims of sex abuse still wait to be healed, the people look for some adequate response to the sacramental shortage and they are given a translation of the Mass and its readings that was dated when Napoleon was plotting to escape from Elba.

These behaviors are discouraging to good Catholics who do not want to leave their wobbling church . . . They want to stay on as our poor bishops are ordered by Roman bureaucrats to prop up hierarchical structures at all costs. They need to encourage each other and good priests to remain calm even when a new and provocative edict is issued from the bureaucracy. Don't get involved even trying to refute these various commands. These documents are symptoms of the bureaucratic syndrome, the death rattle of every dying bureaucracy, the last crazed messages being sent out before the hierarchical model swallows its worker bees in the dust cloud of its final collapse.

Meanwhile, Vatican II Catholics may well follow the advice my psychiatrist wife and I give to healthy people when they are put upon by the unhealthy: Repeat at least twice a day, "I am not the one who is crazy here."

- Eugene Cullen Kennedy
"The Church in 2010 and France in 1940"
National Catholic Reporter
July 22, 2010

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Eugene Kennedy on Roman Catholicism's "Post-Hierarchical Blues"
Rome Falling
A Time to Re-Think the Basis and Repair the Damage
Hans Küng: "We Are Facing a Structural Problem"
Staying on Board
Re-Forming "the Vatican" Doesn't Mean Destroying the Church
Thomas Doyle: "There is Something Radically Wrong with the Institutional Catholic Church"
Game Over
The Roman Catholic Pyramid is Crumbling
An Offering of Ashes
A Brave Hope
Knowing What To Do, Knowing Why To Stay

Recommended Off-site Link:
Creating a Liberating Church - Rosemary Radford Ruether (The Progressive Catholic Voice, July 15, 2010).

Wisconsin Adventure

I returned last night from a wonderful five-day "Wisconsin Adventure" with my good friends Kathleen and Joey. It was actually the second road trip vacation the three of us have taken together. Two years ago we followed the Mississippi River down to St. Louis. For more on that trip, see the previous Wild Reed series "Road Trip to St. Louis," which starts here.

For our latest journey together we traveled to and explored the beautiful area of south-west Wisconsin.


Part 1: Black River Falls


We left St. Paul/Minneapolis last Saturday afternoon, July 17, and drove south on I-94 W across the Mississippi River from Minnesota into Wisconsin, down to Black River Falls.

Some friends had lent me a five-person tent, but upon arrival at the camp ground we discovered that there were no tent poles included! As a result, we stayed that night at a Motel 8 in nearby Neillsville.

We took our bikes along with us on this trip, and so next day we cycled around Black River Falls State Forest before later exploring nearby Castle Mound. That night we traveled westward back across the Mississippi into Minnesota where we stayed in Winona at the home of friends of Kathleen's. They kindly loaned us a two-person tent and I bought another one at the local Walmart! The camping part of our trip was back on track!



Above and below: Black River Falls State Forest.




Above and right: Neillsville, WI.

The imposing building pictured above was originally built as a jail in 1897. According to the City of Neillsville website:

The LaCrosse architectural firm of Stozie & Schick utilized the Richardsonian Romanesque architectural style for the 1897 Jail for Clark County. The structure not only housed convicted prisoners but also provided a finely appointed Victorian residence for the Sheriff and his family.

Above and below: Castle Mound State Park, Black River Falls, WI.





Here's what the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has to say about this unique and beautiful place:

Castle Mound is a long, narrow, weathering butte rising 180 feet above the surrounding sand plain and composed of Cambrian sandstone about 400 million years old. A variety of exposures and microclimates has resulted in contrasting forest communities on opposite sides of the mound. Exposed and shaded cliffs up to 30 feet high occur along the central backbone ridge, and sandstone boulders litter the sloping forest floor. The protected northeast slope is forested with a mixed pine forest of white and red pines with Hill's oak, white oak, paper birch, red maple, and large-toothed aspen. . . . The dry southwest face is wooded with jack pine and oak. . . . A hiking trail traverses the area and there is an observation tower near the center of the mound. Castle Mound Pine Forest is owned by the DNR and was designated a state natural area in November 1952.

Right: Kathleen and Joey atop the observation tower - Sunday, July 18, 2010.








Left: The Wild Man of the Wisconsin Woods!







Above and below: Views from Castle Mound.




NEXT: The Elroy-Sparta Bike Trail

Quote of the Day

It seems to me what religion has often become is a belonging system or a mere belief system, both of which ask very little of us. If belonging and believing is our primary concern, Mormons and Moslems do that much better than most mainline Christians. If we just want collective authority, all we have to do is attend and affiliate.

Membership questions largely become a negotiation of who's in and who's out, who's worthy, who's unworthy, who's right and who's wrong. This appeals very much to our ego's control needs, and our ego's need to feel worthy, to feel superior, and to feel a part of a superior group. All are lamentable substitutes for actual transformation into the Mystery of God.

- Richard Rohr
Excerpted from The Authority of Those Who Have Suffered.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Pan's Labyrinth: Critiquing the Cult of Unquestioning Obedience
The Golden Compass: Pointing Beyond Authoritarianism
Conversing and Arguing with the Theology of Philip Pullman
In the Garden of Spirituality - Patrick Carroll
In the Garden of Spirituality - Adrian Smith
In the Garden of Spirituality - Kenneth Stokes
In the Garden of Spirituality - Doris Lessing
In the Garden of Spirituality - Joan Chittister
What It Means To Be Catholic

Clarity, Hope, and Courage

Your heart is the browser.
The pathways are the search engine.
The universe is the real Internet.
And there are many addresses to the Beloved,
Whose server is always online.

– Neil Douglas-Klotz
The Sufi Book of Life: Ninety-Nine Pathways of the Heart for the Modern Dervish

Continuing with The Wild Reed series on Sufism, I share today another excerpt from Neil Douglas-Klotz’s The Sufi Book of Life: Ninety-Nine Pathways of the Heart for the Modern Dervish.

Douglas-Klotz is a world renowned scholar in religious studies, spirituality, and psychology, and a leader in the International Association of Sufism. He is also co-chair of the Mystical Group of the American Academy of Religion and a founder of the worldwide network of the Dances of Universal Peace. I first became aware of him when I discovered his 1993 book Prayers of the Cosmos: Reflections on the Original Meaning of Jesus’ Words.

In reading and reflecting on Douglas-Klotz’s The Sufi Book of Life, I’ve come to realize that I am, at heart, a dervish, i.e., one who is on the “threshold of something, ready to move on and transform him– or herself.” Actually, I think I always have been. My life seems like a series of threshold crossings that have led me to new levels of awareness and engagement with self, God, and others. I sense that I’m at a new threshold, that I’m entering a new phase of my life. Accordingly, I find myself longing for direction and for whatever it is that is needed to be true to this new pathway. I’ve been praying therefore for clarity, hope and courage as I seek to ascertain the particulars of this new direction and remain positive and hopeful despite having to let go of certain securities and comforts that may actually be holding me back from valiantly moving forward in trust and love.

Anyway, for quite some time now I’ve found myself resonating with the insights and ideas on such things that are contained within various Sufi writings – including those of Doris Lessing and Neil Douglas-Klotz. Following is a brief excerpt from the latter’s Sufi Book of Life.

_____________________________________

The most essential practice shared by Sufis of all historical streams [are] the meditation on the heart qualities of the sacred (called al Asma ul Husna, or “the most beautiful names”). In [The Sufi Book of Life] I am translating the same word (asma) as “pathways” in addition to “qualities” or “names” in order to emphasize the dynamic experience of the practice. I have not yet encountered a Sufi tradition, group, or order that does not use these practices. Any of these pathways of the heart can lead you to experience life with deeper feeling and more insight if you approach the practice at the right time. You need only one pathway, if you relentlessly follow it to its source.

In the Sufi tradition, as we move toward becoming fully human, we revive an inner ecology and diversity of spirit. We feel and understand more in life because we can recognize it as a part of our own soul. Both freedom and joy come with being at home in the heart, a heart that we gradually discover to be much wider than we thought. The various pathways may seem to contradict each other (just like life). They are not neatly organized and proportional (just like life). They do work, at least in my experience.

. . . For most of its history, Sufism has operated as a kind of do-it-yourself tradition. We have no overall leader, potentate, or pope (which is not to say that some people haven’t tried to establish themselves, or someone else, as one). The Sufi guide is more a cross between a companion, therapist, and trickster than an almighty guru, and Rumi once said that ultimately the real pir (senior spiritual director) is Love itself.

Updated for the twenty-first century, the pathways of the heart function very much like a search engine to the Internet of life, with our heart acting as the browser through which we view the world, inside and out.


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
The Sufi Way
In the Garden of Spirituality – Doris Lessing
A Living Twenty-First-Century Tradition
Bismillah
It Happens All the Time in Heaven

Photo of the Day

Image: Michael J. Bayly.

Quote of the Day

Coming out, and by extension coming out stories, are important because people evolve when they tell the truth. Some people evolve when they hear the truth.

– Lucy Jane Bledsoe
“Finding Myself in Antarctica”
The Gay and Lesbian Review
July-August 2010

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Coming Out: An Act of Holiness
Daniel Kowalski: “I Can No Longer Fight Who I Am”
Ian McKellen’s Two Greatest Achievements: Playing Gandalf and Coming Out
Darren Hayes, Coming Out . . . Oh, and Time Travel
A Girl Named Sara: “A Person of the Resurrection”
Coming Out in Africa and the Middle East
No Matter What

And for my own coming out story, see The Wild Reed series, In the Footsteps of Spring:
Introduction
Part 1: The Light Within
Part 2: Shards of Summer
Part 3: Intimate Soliloquies
Part 4: Coming Out
Part 5: No Stranger Am I

Photo of the Day

Image: Michael J. Bayly.

E. M. Forster's "Elusive Ideal"

In the June 7 issue of Time magazine, Eric Banks reviews Wendy Moffat’s recently released biography of novelist E.M. Forster (pictured at right).

It’s a fascinating review of what sounds like a compelling biography. It’s also a review that's reprinted in its entirety below – with added links. Enjoy.

___________________________

Only Connect

Novelist E.M. Forster specialized in the “underdeveloped heart.”
A new biography illuminates his own.

By Eric Banks

Time
June 7, 2010

The novelist E.M. Forster lived to the great old age of 91, but by the cultural calendar, his life was even longer. He was born in the starchy days of high-collar Victorian England and died in the Age of Aquarius. In A Great Unrecorded History (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 404 pages) – the first biography of Forster to be ordered around his cloistered homosexuality – Wendy Moffat pulls out another social yardstick: a schoolboy when Oscar Wilde was imprisoned for “gross indecency,” Forster witnessed the telecast of the first moon landing with his friend Christopher Isherwood in the studio of Mark Lancaster, a former Warhol Factory hand who was one of two men shown lock-lipped in the pop artist’s 1964 film Kiss. (Watching Neil Armstrong step onto the lunar surface, Forster muttered, “I don’t think they should be doing that.”)

It isn’t just the length of Forster’s career that has attracted biographers but also its mesmerizing loopsidedness. Four of the five novels he published during his lifetime, including the now classic A Room with a View (1908) and Howards End (1910), appeared before his 31st birthday and before World War I sapped dry the raw material that fed his fiction: the social and emotional landscapes of Edwardian England. “All that I cared for in civilization has gone forever,” he wrote a friend in 1915, “and I am trying to live without either hopes or fears – not an easy job, but one keeps going on some how.” His masterpiece A Passage to India appeared in 1924, but it was as much a farewell to the form as a triumphant return. He filled the next 46 years with biographies, travelogues, radio broadcasts and criticism, but he seemed to have given up on the novel. Until 1971, that is, the year after his death, when Maurice, the book he’d kept under wraps for six decades – “the first homosexual love story with a happy ending,” the American writer Glenway Wescott called it – appeared, shining a partial light on the path Forster flirted with but abandoned.

Despite periodic cajoling from friends who had seen the manuscript, Forster wouldn’t permit Maurice’s publication during his lifetime. When J.R. Ackerley argued that he should follow the example of André Gide and his frankly homosexual memoirs, Forster answered, “But Gide hasn’t got a mother!” For Moffat, Forster’s friends’ plea missed the point: “The kind of fiction writing he wished to pursue cut him off from his audience, and he rechanneled his pen, writing for his own ear, for his friends, and for the more charitable future he had imagined in his dedication to Maurice.” (It was inscribed “to a happier year.”)

Moffat pays diligent attention to who those friends were, whether in snobbish Bloomsbury or austere Cambridge. If not exactly a father figure, Forster became a sort of avuncular guest of honor among successive generations of gay artists and writers – from poet Constantine Cavafy to composer Benjamin Britten – and in various gay scenes, including, surprisingly, that of late-1940s Greenwich Village. While many of the biographical details are familiar, Moffat amplifies Forster’s story with his words, scavenged from previously unavailable diaries. They record a life choked off by a cosseted upbringing and survey the same unhappy prospects of the “underdeveloped heart” Forster captured in his prose. His decades-long companionship with a married policeman named Bob Buckingham could have come directly out of his fiction: it was an extended essay in love muddled by social restrictions and the limits of human connection.

Moffat isn’t gossipy or reductive – the Forster who emerges from her work is a more human and satisfying figure than we’ve known. She portrays a limited man in full whose compromises between sense and sensibility parallel those of his most complex fictional characters. If his reticence tempers her quietly laudatory picture – the novelist who lightly but assuredly sketched the deadweight of social class in Howards End and colonial power in A Passage to India balked at doing the same with a homosexually themed story “until my death and England’s” – Moffat’s biography gives a new twist on the most over-quoted line Forster ever wrote. “Only connect the prose and the passion” was not just a sermonizing bit of novelistic intrusion but the novelist’s always elusive ideal.


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Don Gorton on the Significance of Maurice (Part 1)
Don Gorton on the Significance of Maurice (Part 2)
Celebrating Two Pioneers

Recommended Off-site Links:
Andrew Holleran on E.M. Forster’s Dueling Biographers – Band of Thebes (May 6, 2010).
Only Connect: The Unofficial E.M. Forster Site

Opening Image: Roger Fry.

Prayer of the Week

This week’s prayer is from Just One Year: A Global Treasury of Prayer and Worship (edited by Timothy Radcliffe). It is written by Judy Bainbridge.

_____________________________________

A Prayer for Healing

Jesus asks, “Do you want to be healed?”
Oh yes, Lord, we want to be healed.

From our self-preoccupation and self-pity,
and our indifference to those in need,
From our greed for material things
and our wasting of the gifts we have been given,
Oh yes, Lord, we want to be healed.

From our reluctance to let go of hurts,
and our pursuit of petty revenge,
From our fear and anxiety, and our inability
to trust you or our neighbor,
Oh yes, Lord, we want to be healed.

From our lethargy and cynicism
in the face of the need to change and be changed,
From our narrow judgments, our unthinking prejudice,
and our easy acceptance of stereotypes,
Oh yes, Lord, we want to be healed.

Amen.

Image: Michael J. Bayly.

Quote of the Day

If I were a member or supporter of the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement, I would be opening a bottle of champagne right now. The Vatican has in effect given legitimacy and momentum to what is still an incredibly tiny movement with [its] clumsy legal manuver [of adding to the list of grave offenses against the sacrament of holy orders the "attempted ordination of women"]. [It's] tantamount to the United States dropping a nuclear weapon on Luxembourg - only more ridiculous because this will do absolutely no damage to the women's ordination movement. It is more like a gift. None of those women are afraid of excommunication any longer; indeed, it is now the Vatican that appears fearful.

- Bryan Cones
"Sex Abuse and Women's Ordination?"
U.S. Catholic
July 9, 2010

Recommended Off-site Link:
Ordination of Women in Minneapolis Reflects Emerging Renewal of Priesthood and Church - Michael Bayly (The Progressive Catholic Voice, August 19, 2009).
Vatican Rules: Ordaining Women Priests a Crime Like Sex Abuse of Children - David Gibson (Politics Daily, July 9, 2010).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
In Prophetic Obedience to the Spirit
Roman Catholic Womenpriests Ordained in Minneapolis (2007)
"We Are All the Rock" - An Interview with Roman Catholic Womanpriest Judith McKloskey
Responding to Excommunication
Revealing a Hidden History
Thoughts on Ordination, Intellectual Dishonesty, and the Holy Spirit
The Journal of James Curtis - Part 3: A Journey Begins
The Journal of James Curtis - Part 5: My Lunch with a "Medicine Bearer"

Photo of the Day

Image: Michael J. Bayly

Quote of the Day

It’s World Cup Final weekend, meaning that soccer will be on almost everyone’s mind — and then promptly disappear from everyone’s mind for at least the next four years. As you turn on the television this Sunday, will you be rooting for the red shirts of Spain, or the orange shirts of The Netherlands?

Either way, no matter who you'll be rooting for, you’ll be rooting for a country that recognizes full marriage equality for all of its citizens. They say God works in mysterious ways, right? Maybe this is her/his way of sending the world (and all of its anti-gay legislators) a nice, subtle message.

Or it could just be that Paul the octopus really likes countries that support gay marriage, given that the eight-tentacled being has predicted every match he's been asked to call this World Cup. (I fully expect the National Organization for Marriage to send out an email blast to their network, alleging that Paul is nothing but an activist octopus.)

Oh, and just when you think it couldn't get more gay-friendly, let's add in the fact that South Africa is the World Cup's host, and they too recognize marriage equality. Gay, gay, and more gay.

– Michael A. Jones
“The World Cup Loves Gay Marriage”
GayRights.org
July 9, 2010

Recommended Off-site Link:
World Cup Winners and Losers - Martin Rogers (Yahoo! Sports, July 11, 2010).

See also the previous Wild Reed post:
The Gay World Cup
Aussie! Aussie! Aussie!

Image: Spain’s Andres Iniesta, left, scores a goal past Netherlands’ Rafael van der Vaart, during the World Cup final soccer match between the Netherlands and Spain at Soccer City in Johannesburg, South Africa, Sunday, July 11, 2010. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

The Dancer and the Dance

I danced myself out of the womb.
Is it strange to dance so soon?
I danced myself into the tomb,
And then again, once more . . .

“Cosmic Dancer”
T-Rex

I think that in some parallel universe I’m a dancer. Or maybe it was that I was once one in a past life. Of course, all such speculation is no doubt simply a way of saying that I’m drawn to the art of dance but that in this life and in this universe, the opportunities never presented themselves for me to explore or pursue this particular form of artistic expression. Truth be told, I doubt I possess the huge amount of dedication and commitment necessary to develop the physical strength, flexibility, and stamina of a dancer. I have a hard enough time maintaining any type of regular exercise routine – plus I can’t even touch my toes!

I’m not sure where my interest in and attraction to dance comes from. And I should say that when I refer to “dance,” I’m not talking about ballroom dancing or folk dancing – as admirable as these expressions no doubt are. No, I’m definitely a modern dance kinda guy – with an openness to classical influences, of course.

I should also state up front that I’m in no way adverse to the sight of a man in peak physical condition – which, as I’ve noted, is what one needs to achieve and maintain in order to be a dancer. Lots of different sports and physical pursuits require such athleticism, but dance also demands gracefulness, and it's this combination of athleticism and grace that I find appealing. I also find it inspiring. I may not be able to touch my toes (yet) but watching the graceful and athletic moves of a dancer, mindful of the dedication and work that goes into expressing such beauty and strength, always motivates me to, at the very least, keep at my humble exercise routine – one that involves mainly push-ups, sit-ups, stretches, and some basic weight training.

It’s not, however, simply the body and moves of a dancer that fascinate me. It’s the whole idea that the human body can express meaning, ideas, emotions, truth - the really important things, in other words, of this dance we call life. I resonate with what François Rousseau has to say about dancers, after photographing many of them for his book Men in Motion: The Art and Passion of the Male Dancer. “The mission of the dancer,” he says, “is not to exhibit his body as an object, but rather to use the body he has, in the space he has, to put forth the feeling and meaning within his dance.” The physical beauty of the dancer, he adds, is “actually a by-product of the artistic determination.”

In The Queer Encyclopedia of Music, Dance, and Musical Theater, Douglas Blair Turnbaugh contends that dance “is almost certainly the oldest art,” and that as a “bonding agent,” it has been a “factor in the creation of great civilizations as different as those of ancient Egypt and Greece and the Aztecs and the Incas.”

Annemarie Schimmel in the foreword to the book Rumi and the Whirling Dervishes, notes that “in many civilizations, dance was an offering to the deities who might enjoy the harmonious movements of men and women.” Yet there is more to dance, especially in Sufism, often described as the esoteric aspect of Islam that seeks to convey direct knowledge of the sacred. In this realm, it is also an offering of one’s own self. And on musing on this point, Schimmel asks: “Does not the moth circumambulate the candle, dancing, as it were, to immolate itself in the end in the flame which is enchanting light and consuming fire, representative of Divine Beauty and Majesty?”

Schimmel goes on to describe the prominent role that dance has played in the Sufi tradition:

Dance was practiced by the Sufis from early days; in the late ninth century the first semahanes were founded – houses where the Sufis could relax somewhat from their intense spiritual work and harsh asceticism. Soon, many onlookers considered the whirling dance an essential part of Sufism – very much to the chagrin of the “sober” Sufis, let alone the orthodox lawyers. However, the only brotherhood in which the whirling was ever institutionalized as part of the ritual was the Mevleviyya, for Mevlana Rumi himself sang his immortal verses while whirling, enthralled by passionate longing for his friend Shams, the “Sun of Tabriz,” who opened to him the way to immediate experience of the Divine Beloved.

Love, however, means to die to one’s [ego] and to be revived in the Beloved, as much as the whiling dance can be interpreted as the dance of everything created around the central Sun of Divine Love, it also means to re-enact death and resurrection.

Not surprisingly, dance has a long history of entwinement with both spirituality and sexuality. The sexual act, after all, is also in its way a re-enactment of death and resurrection. In fact, Turnbaugh maintains that it is the fear of the sexual energy expressed in dance that has ensured its excising from the rituals of Christianity.

Other religious traditions, however, along with some aspects of Christianity, display a less narrow and less fearful understanding of that vital energy that, as theologians James and Evelyn Whitehead remind us, is the mysterious presence at the heart of all things, a presence that “courses through the world, enlivening and healing hearts.” We’re talking here of erotic presence and energy, known “through and beyond sexual arousal.” It's a presence that seeks and yearns to engage us personally so as to lead us “beyond narrow self-interest into fuller participation in life.” Thus this energy, this Eros, has, as Jean Houston notes, a “mission with the soul.” But what happens when we fail to recognize and/or respond to this sacred invitation to enter into a fuller participation in life? “Without Eros in some form,” Houston says, “creativity suffocates; [and] the soul does not grow.”

I sense and experience Eros in the beauty and power of dance. Through dance, this energy of radical love and transformation inspires me and calls me to enter into the dance.

What do I mean by this? Well, I don’t mean it makes me want to do pirouettes down the street, but it can and does inspire me to grow and be more flexible and creative in my thinking, my loving, my being in the world.

It inspires me, in short, to be the best I can be in all areas of my life: my physical life, my prayer life, my relational life.

In other words, I may not have, and may never have, the body of a dancer. But I can have the soul of one.

I also find it interesting that the “desire for the fullness of life” that Eros imparts is what Jesus talked about and yearns for us to embody. Is it any wonder that Lord of the Dance is one of my favorite hymns?

. . . I danced on the Sabbath when I cured the lame,
The holy people said it was a shame;
They whipped and they stripped and they hung me high;
And they left me there on a cross to die.

Dance, then, wherever you may be;
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he.
And I’ll lead you all wherever you may be,
And I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he.

They cut me down and I leapt up high,
I am the life that’ll never, never die;
I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me;
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he.

And I smile to think that the word we use to describe what is possessed and expressed by a beautiful and sensuous dancer, is the same word we use to describe God’s life-giving presence deep within us and throughout the world: grace. And since we are created in the image of God, I guess we’re all called to be dancers of one kind or another: graceful dancers of compassion, justice, insight, and revelation; dancers that seek to communicate, connect, and transform both ourselves and the world.

I seek to be such a dancer. And recently I’ve also decided to allow myself to be more intentionally and regularly inspired on multiple levels by attending actual dance performances here in the Twin Cities. I start tomorrow evening by attending the biennial show “Solo” at the Southern Theater in Minneapolis. According to the St. Paul Pioneer Press, “Solo” is an excellent way to access the “pulse of the Twin Cities dance scene” as it showcases the six most recent recipients of McKnight Foundation dance fellowships, each performing a new solo work. The “six-pack” of dance will features performances by Mary Ann Bradley, Sam Feipal (above), Kats Fukasawa, Justin Leaf, Karen Sherman, and Roxanne Wallace.

I also plan on regularly writing and sharing articles on the art of dance in a series of Wild Reed posts entitled “The Dancer and the Dance” – of which this post is officially the first. And I’ll conclude tonight’s post with the music video for the Kate Bush song, “Running Up That Hill” – a video that is unique in the realm of pop music for its intentional emphasis on dance.

Says Kate about this emphasis:

The director [of the video was] David Garfath and the dancer was a guy called Michael Hervieu, whom we auditioned. We wanted to do a piece, a serious piece of dance. Over the last couple of years, all the videos I've seen, dance has become a very exploited thing and hasn’t really been treated seriously. It’s been used to sort of be accessories around the person who’s starring in the film. And we thought it would be nice to do almost a classical piece of dance, filmed as well as possible, because it’s very rarely filmed well now. In fact, the only well-filmed piece of dance I think I've ever seen was Twyla Tharp’s “Catherine Wheel” and I think that's because she was so involved in it that it was so good. So that’s what we wanted to do, a nice serious piece of dance, simple, well-filmed and give dance a chance in a real way in this pop world.

Of the resulting music video, Paul Jeremiah Hayes notes:

The dance draws upon contemporary dance with a repeated gesture suggestive of drawing a bow and arrow (the gesture was made literal on the image for the single in which Bush poses with a real bow and arrow). At the climax of the song, Bush's partner unexpectedly withdraws from her. In a surreal sequence, both are swept away down a long hall in opposite directions by an endless stream of anonymous figures wearing masks that are pictures of Bush and Hervieu’s faces.

MTV however, chose not to show this video and instead used a live performance of the song recorded at a promotional appearance on the BBC TV show Wogan). This was possibly due to the fact that the original video contains no actual performance or lip-synching of the song, or more likely they simply felt the original video too highbrow or sexually charged for their audience.

Mmm . . . too sexually charged for MTV? I think the issue was that it’s too erotically-charged. Remember, Eros is known through and beyond sexual arousal, and seeks to draw us into engagement with the sacred, with the depth dimension of human experience. I think that's what can challenge and frighten people, and can lead some to dismiss and/or ridicule artistic endeavors such as the following, as “highbrow.”





Recommended Off-site Links:
• Voice of Dance
• Michelle Velluci: Dance Art Writer
• The Dance Enthusiast
• Kate Bush on “Running Up That Hill”
• My Deal with Kate

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Reclaiming the Queer Artistic Heritage
• Love, Equality, and the Rumba
• Oh, Yeah!

Image 1: Italian ballet dancer Roberto Bolle.
Image 2: Desmond Richardson.
Image 3: Ancient depiction of dancing Greek boy.
Image 4: Dervish and photographer unknown.
Image 5: Jason Piper and Richard Winsor in Matthew Bourne's Dorian Gray. Photograph: Bill Cooper
Image 6: Raska Thomas.
Image 7: "Behold the Joy of Jesus" by Lindena Robb (from the Jesus Laughing Exhibition).
Image 8: Sam Feilpal. Photograph: Eric Saulitus.
Image 9: Kate Bush and Michael Hervieu. Photographer unknown.

Photo of the Day

Image: Michael J. Bayly.

Remembering Manuela Saenz: "Liberator of the Liberator"

I found this recent Associated Press story quite interesting. Perhaps you will too.

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Venezuela Honors Lover of its Independence Hero

By Christopher Toothacker

Associated Press
July 5, 2010

South America's 19th century independence hero Simón Bolívar was reunited Monday with his controversial and audacious lover at a graveside ceremony.

A coffer containing the symbolic remains of Manuela Saenz, an audacious woman credited with helping Bolivar liberate several South American nations from Spain, was moved alongside Bolivar’s tomb in an independence day celebration.

The government of President Hugo Chavez is helping redress Saenz’s reputation, portraying her as one of the continent’s greatest heroines.

Scorned as immoral and adulterous by some, Saenz spent the last years of her life destitute and her contribution to South America’s independence struggle against Spain was largely forgotten after she died during a diphtheria epidemic in 1856. Her body was burned and dumped, along with those of many other victims, in a mass grave in Ecuador.

Chavez and Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa placed earth gathered from the grave where she was buried next to Bolivar's tomb inside the National Pantheon as supporters of the two Latin American leaders cheered outside.

A path to the building was covered with rose petals and lined with women soldiers dressed in uniforms like one Saenz once wore. State television broadcast spots stating: “Manuela returns to reunite with Bolivar.”



Ramon Torres, Ecuador's ambassador to Venezuela, said the two leftist presidents “paid a historical debt” by placing Saenz's remains in the pantheon.

Saenz was born in 1797 as the daughter of a Spanish aristocrat in Ecuador. She was forced to marry an Englishman whom she left. She distributed propaganda for the independence movement and later became a highly decorated colonel in the rebel army.

Chavez often speaks of an incident in which mutinous officers razed the presidential palace in Bogota, Colombia, one night in 1828, and Saenz helped Bolivar to escape. He also likes to note that Bolivar dubbed his companion “The Liberator of the Liberator.”

Some historians now consider her a pioneer for women's rights. But for decades, many Venezuelans condemned Saenz as an immoral lover. Mention of her deeds was left out of history books. “Conservative history condemned this woman to be forgotten,” Torres said.

Bolivar, who was just 19 when his first and only wife died, had numerous lovers throughout his life. But Saenz accompanied him during his military campaigns across the Andes and lived with him during the last eight years of his life — until his death in 1830.

After he passed away, generals who had conspired against Bolivar barred Saenz from Colombia and her native Ecuador. Destitute, she lived out her days in Peru, writing letters for American whalers who needed help courting Latin American women.

Above: Members of Venezuela's army escort a box containing earth taken from the mass grave where Manuela Saenz, lover of Venezuelan independence hero Simon Bolivar, was allegedly buried in 1856, in Caracas, Monday, July 5, 2010. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

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Fascinating story, don’t you think? And wouldn’t it make for a great film!?

I mean, all the elements are there: action, romance, and a century-old injustice finally put right. Oh, yeah, and I know the perfect person to play Simón Bolívar: the talented and beautiful Gael Garcia Bernal (pictured at right). Most recently he played the work-obsessed boyfriend in Letters to Juliet. He’s probably most famous, however, for playing the young Che Guevara in The Motorcycle Diaries, and for his truly gender-bending role in Bad Education. Actually, if you've seen this particular film you'd know that Bernal could also get away with playing Manuela! Mind you, that probably wouldn't go down too well with certain audiences.

Above: Children dressed as Venezuela’s independence hero Simon Bolivar, center, and his lover Manuela Saenz, right, attend a ceremony to honor Saenz in Caracas, Monday, July 5, 2010. Venezuela celebrated its independence day by commemorating the life of Saenz, who helped Bolivar free several South American nations from Spanish colonial rule, placing her remains alongside the tomb of her former lover inside the National Pantheon. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)