Godly Play Lecture Sheffield Cathedral May 13Th 2017
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Godly Play Lecture Sheffield Cathedral May 13th 2017
COME DANCE WITH ME –
How might the world of dancing address the theory, theology and practice of Godly Play?
Peter Privett.
Come dance with me.
Why! I’m shy I’m British
I’m reserved and I can’t dance..
Come dance with me.
I won’t dance. Don’t ask me.
My heart won’t let my feet do the things that they should do.
{Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern 1935)
Come dance with me.
The invitation comes from a C14th Persian, a celebrated poet, (Ca 1320 – 1389) a contemporary with Geoffrey Chaucer.
He was born Shams-ud-din Muhammmad in Shiraz and spent most of his life in this city in the south of Persia
He chose the name Hafiz (memorizer) when he became a poet.
The youngest of three sons, his father died when Hafiz was in his teens.
He worked as a baker’s assistant by day and attended school during the evenings using part of his salary for the tuition.
His teacher was Muhammed Attar a poet who wrote about the harmony of life and the processes of love.
Hafiz was encouraged to write a poem each day, to collect them and study them as a process of spiritual unfolding.
Before long his skills were noticed and he was appointed court poet. Over his lifetime people from every walk of life sang his poems.
Hafiz was a disciple of Sufism and during periods of fanatical fundamentalism the Sufi connections went underground. As a result symbolic language became important during these times of extreme orthodoxy.
Images of wine and the tavern came to represent love and the Sufi school.
Spiritual students were depicted as clowns, beggars, scoundrels, rogues, courtesans, or intoxicated wayfarers.
Hafiz is sometimes called the Tongue of the Invisible, as many of his poems explore the themes God love to a beloved world.
So here in C21st Sheffield Hafiz, (using rhythms of the ghazel - a popular love song) offers us this incredible seductive invitation from C14th century Persia:
Every child has known God,
Not the God of names,
Not the God of don’ts,
Not the God who ever does anything weird
But the God who only knows four words
And keeps repeating them, saying:
“Come Dance with Me.
I am happy before I have a reason.
I am full of light even before the sky
Can greet the sun or the moon.
Dear companions,
We have been in love with God
For so very, very long.
What can Hafiz now do but
Forever Dance!
(Daniel Ladinsky translator: 1999: The Gift - Poems by Hafiz: Penguin Compass
Daniel Ladinsky translator: 1996, 2006: I heard God Laughing –Poems of Hope and Joy: Penguin)
So I invite you to this dance of divine love and to wonder what on earth this has to do with the theory, theology and practice of Godly Play.
Dance, of all the art forms, is the one that is the most fleeting the most ephemeral. the most transitory because it operates in time and space. Unlike a painting it lasts for only that amount time that it takes for the movement to happen and then it is gone.
It calls us to live in this moment. Perhaps of all the art forms it is the one that reminds us of our ‘temporayness’ (if there is such a word) of our own mortality. This was a conversation I had with Bill, who was talking about his ballroom and Latin dancing lessons he’s having wife his wife, as I was photocopying the handouts for this lecture.
So Come Dance With Me is an invitation to cross the threshold into the world of dancers to see if their story their wondering, their response, their feasting has any wisdom for us. In what ways might these dancers bless us?
At one point at our last lecture and conference in Putney, Jerome Berryman reminded us that much of the time our work with children and their spirituality is often ignored and held in low regard. We often work on the margins and the edges of the church.
So perhaps the clowns, rogues, scoundrels, beggars and intoxicated wayfarers of Hafiz might be our dancing companions this morning.
Stewart Headlam (1847- 1924) was a controversial Church of England priest working in many of the poorest parts of London and was constantly dismissed by the Bishop of London for preaching, Christian Socialism. Headlam was never given a parish and spent all his life championing the poor, campaigning for education, housing and political reform. It didn’t help his ecclesiastical career when he contributed a large sum of money to cover Oscar Wilde’s bail. For him it was a matter of artistic freedom and when Wilde came out of prison, Headlam was there at 6 o clock in the morning with offers of hospitality before Wilde left for the continent.
A large part of his ministry was with the dancers and actors of the music halls and at the radical Commonwealth Club he gave a lecture defending actors dancers and music halls, which inflamed his opponents and led to his dismissal by the Bishop
He wrote a book about ballet techniques and proclaimed that liturgy should not be deprived of dancing.
Dancing was sacramental:
“To take the illustration from the art of dancing, which perhaps more than all other arts is an outward and invisible sign of an inward invisible grace,
ordained by the Word of God Himself, as a means whereby we receive the same and a pledge to assure us thereof:
and which has suffered even more than the other arts from the utter anti sacramentalism of British philistines.
Your Manichean Protestant and your superfine rationalist reject the dance as worldly frivolous sensual and so forth; and your dull stupid sensualist sees legs and grunts with some satisfaction:
but your sacramentalist knows something worth more than both of these.
He knows what the dancer perhaps herself may be partially unconscious of, that we live now by faith and not by sight, and that the poetry of the dancer is the expression of unseen spiritual grace.”
He then quotes the poet T Gordon Hake and his poem Maiden Ecstasy:
“ She all her being flings into the dance
None dare interpret all her limbs express.”
He then concludes
These are the words of a true sacramentalist
(Steward Headlam Church Reformer October 1884 issue)
(See also Frank Kermode: 2015: Puzzles and Epiphanies Routledge Revivals: essays and reviews 1958-1961: Routledge)
Headlam raises many issues in this quote, but perhaps two might be of interest to us now as we think about children and their spirituality and the theory and practice of Godly Play
1.The strong criticism of the “Manichean Protestant” and the “superfine rationalist” identifies the age-old arguments about mind over matter, body verses spirit. There is a strong Christian tradition that has negative attitudes towards flesh with a rigid split between body and spirit. Spirit is perceived as virtuous, a higher nature, whilst things of the body are profane, secular. Therefore the embodied nature of dance must belong to the lower nature and to the realms of vice and depravity.
Doug Adams (1945 -2007) a professor of Christianity and the Arts, has written extensively on dance and liturgy. He comments and reflects on the connections between dance, sacraments and worship and that this reminds us of the ‘bodily base of all life’
The dancing and eating in worship makes us aware of our material nature and hence our solidarity with and commitment to the world. By recognising our dependence upon matter, common matter including people, we realise our solidarity with its fate and our commitment to its preservation. By recognising our own dependence, we see similar dependence of others and our communion with them.
(Doug Adams: Communal Dance Forms and Consequences in:
Doug Adams and Diane Apostolos-Cappadona editors: 1993, 2001: Dance as Religious Studies: Wipf and Stock publishers)
Godly Play’s really supports the positive use of the body with its emphasis on the importance of body language and gesture, of observing and reading the whole of the child’s body as they interact with the Godly Play process We are often pleased when children verbally express wonderful ‘spiritual’ thoughts or express some deep insight but:
How do we give affirmation to the child who says nothing?
How do we affirm the bodily presence of the children?
2.Headlam’s comments about the fact that the dancer might be unconscious of the implications of her dance and the “None dare interpret all her limbs express”, raises the difficulties and complications of being openly aware and sensitive to what occurs in our Godly Play sessions and of being tentative and cautious to make quick conclusions and interpret the event.
Headlam reminds us that a sacramental approach lives with the mystery and ambiguity of the event. We reside on the threshold of known unknowing.
So when do we make judgements about children and their spiritual lives?
When and how do we speak and interpret?
When and how are we silent?
How do we express the truth of spirituality and keep the integrity of mystery and unknowing?
How do we distinguish between our interpretation and the real experience of the child?
In the early church during C 2nd 3rd 4th there is a real ambiguity of feeling towards dance. On the one hand it is linked with drunkenness and immorality and on the other it is the work of angels. The numerous references in the writings of the early church fathers to the dangers and frivolity of dancing and their condemnation of dance suggests that people carried on dancing despite preaching and pronouncement against it. Indeed, it would have been very difficult for the early Church to turn against dance with any hope of success, since this was an integral part of private and public ceremonies and feasts.
Margaret Fisk Taylor, (1908 -2004) a pioneer in the field of sacred dance, identifies numerous positive references to dance in the early church.
(see Margaret Taylor : A History of Symbolic Movement in Worship: in
Doug Adams and Diane Apostolos-Cappadona editors: 1993 2001 : Dance as Religious Studies: Wipf and Stock publishers)
The Greek word ‘choros’ involved not just singing but also dancing. The Greeks believed that dancing was the art that most influenced the soul and was the means of expressing that which cannot be expressed with words.
Clement of Alexandria says the chorus was a worthy form for religious feeling.
“Those who have not been initiated in the mysteries or have no taste for dance and song were “dissonant, un rhythmical and material.”
Gregory of Nyssa had an inclusive, universal view of human salvation.
‘No human being will remain outside the number to be saved….. no being created by God will fall outside the kingdom of God’
His commentary on Psalm 50 gives us a vision of humanity in harmony, which is active in the dancing. Jesus the choreographer inspires and leads dancers both on earth and in the church.
Once there was a time when the whole rational creation formed a single dancing chorus looking upward to the one leader of this dance. And the harmony of motion that was imparted to them by reason of his law found its way into their dancing
(St Gregory’s commentary on Psalm 50)
His contemporary, Gregory Nazianzus extolled its use in worship.
David dancing before the ark (2 Samuel 6:14) was a sign of intense joy.
‘By the rhythmic motions of his body he thus showed in public his inner state of soul.”
Gregory Nazianzus advised the emperor Julian, who had reintroduced pagan dances, to take David’s example instead.
“Dance to the honour of God. Such exercises of peace and piety are worthy of an emperor and a Christian.”
Gregory of Nyssa’s image of the dancing Christ has inspired the building of a modern church in one of the poorer parts of San Francisco, which I had the privilege of visiting a few years ago. The artist Mark Dukes, with the people of St. Gregory’s, has created a wonderful icon that wraps around the inside walls of the church surrounding the altar showing ninety larger-than life saints, four animals, stars, moons, suns and a twelve- foot tall dancing Christ.
The saints range from traditional figures like King David, Teresa of Avila and Frances of Assisi to people like Gandhi, Anne Frank, and Margaret Mead. They represent musicians, artists, mathematicians, martyrs, scholars, mystics, lovers, prophets and sinners from all times, from many faiths and backgrounds.
A key part of the worship, whilst I was there, took place during the offertory. We danced a simple processional line dance made up of about 60 – 70 children, women, men and a dog, moving from one part of the building to circle the altar for the Eucharistic prayer. As we danced around the altar, Christ and the saints danced above us, with us and around us. It was an embodied proclamation of St Gregory’s theology.
Richard Fabian the co-founder of St Gregory’s writes:
All humanity shares God’s image, and shows it to the universe, so all people can move toward God together. This universal view made Gregory an extraordinary theologian in his day and draws fresh interest today, as people of many world faiths find more and more they share.
For an icon portraying St. Gregory’s vision, the dancers must be diverse, and exemplify traits that Gregory’s teaching emphasizes and our congregation’s life upholds…..
Christian or not, these saints each show us some of God’s image, as Christ makes that image fully plain to us. Our list includes people who crossed boundaries in ways that unified humanity, often at their own cost. Some proved lifelong models of virtue; others changed direction dramatically from evil to good, even near the end of life. Some were on the frontier of Christian thought and living, and had gifts that were unrecognized or disparaged in their time; yet their gifts matter for what we do today. Others have been long revered throughout the world’s churches. Some overcame difficult circumstances; others moved toward God despite the distractions of worldly comfort and power. Musicians, artists, writers, poets, dancers, workers, organizers, missionaries, martyrs, spiritual teachers, protesters, prophets, reformers, judges, builders, liberators, scholars, healers, soldiers, monastics, couples straight and gay, diplomats, planners, governors, and wild and domestic beasts. Christian, Jew, Muslim, Confucian, Buddhist, Hindu, Shinto, Pagan; of many continents, races, classes and eras. These saints lead us in our dancing, as all look upward to Jesus, the perfecter of human faith, drawing new harmony from his example as Gregory teaches us to do.
(St Gregory Nyssa Church San Francisco website)
The early Byzantine church dances seem to be similar to the one I danced in San Francisco, a simple ring or circle dance that included large numbers of people which were often performed at festivals such as Easter and Christmas and the feast days of martyrs and saints.
Ambrose tried to clarify and spiritualise the values and dangers of dancing.
‘The Lord bids us dance, not merely with the circling movements of the body, but with pious faith in him”
John Chrysostom also used David as the example but cautioned against unseemly movements like those of the pagan dances. Christians should keep their dances sacred as God has given them feet so that they dance like the angels
George Robert Mead (1863 – 1933) was a historian, writer and scholar of ancient Gnostic manuscripts.
In 1926 he wrote three articles on the topic of the circle dance recounted in the ancient manuscript of the Acts of St John probably dating to C2nd.
(See Mead, G.R.S. "The Sacred Dance of Jesus." The Quest II 1926: 1-67.)
Mentioned by several C4th church fathers in lists of apocryphal texts, this ancient Christian text only now survives in fragments.
The Acts of John has strong connections with the fourth gospel and is a mixture of narrative, sermon and liturgical practice. It includes a hymn; The Circle Dance of the Cross. This hymn has a dancing Jesus surrounded by his dancing disciples on the night before the crucifixion. (See appendix for full text.)
The hymn begins with a doxology Christ then pronounces eight statements about himself to which his disciples respond with AMEN.
The next part suggests that Christ is grace dancing in the circle and it then follows with other statements based on scripture.
I will pipe dance all of you AMEN
I will mourn Beat you all your breasts AMEN
There are mysterious reference to the cosmos dancing:
The One Ogdoad sings praises with us AMEN (Ogdoad - eight mythical deities)
The twelve number dance on high AMEN (The twelve signs of the zodiac)
To the All it belongs to dance in the height AMEN