Dear Friends,
My brother-in-law got married this weekend! What a joyous time!
My wife and I, who had a fairly traditional church wedding almost seven years ago, smiled and laughed and hugged them and reassured her brother and our new sister-in-law that yes, weddings are surreal and you probably aren’t really experiencing it. And yet, I got to watch two people deeply in love, and who we love so much, commit to each other in a way that was very different from how we chose to be married. Sure, many of the guests were the same. There were vows of different sorts. There was food and cake. As couples, we each chose distinctive live bands.
Most importantly, people at both weddings spoke of them as such true reflections of the couples they celebrated. To that end, it’s probably not surprising that my wedding didn’t include dancing.
Dancing is so often a marker of celebration. We probably haven’t really danced under any circumstances since our undergraduate days. But when I think back to my early exposure to Godly Play, and particularly to my Core Training, I always remember the end of the Exodus story, which we find in this week’s lectionary. Having entered into Freedom, Miriam led the dancing.
Christian Prohibitions
Growing up, like many little girls, I went to dancing school. I loved ballet and shied away from both tap and jazz. I did the Macarena (it was the 90s! – though some of my current elementary schoolers tell me it’s making a comeback). In college, I trained in a peculiar dance form called Contact Improvisation, which emerged in the Oberlin area in the 1970s. I occasionally dropped in on events branded as Spirit Dance. I am interested in dance, at least formally speaking, but most of the time, the conditions of dance are, for me, too loud, too bright, or otherwise overwhelming.
I also grew up in a church where dance was not allowed.
To be clear, we were allowed to dance. We just weren’t allowed to dance at the church – anywhere on the ground. It was in the church constitution, alongside drinking alcohol and playing cards. It was some deeply Puritan, out of date stuff, but I also grew up in an area known for its Prohibition activism, so it certainly makes sense. My mother even used the prohibition to get out partner dancing in gym class when she was younger, though that was not the spirit of the law, so to speak. Dancing, this rule suggested, was not just inappropriate to the act of worship, it also just wasn’t good Christian behavior. Writing that, it doesn’t feel like what I was taught, from a moral perspective, and yet, isn’t that what the rule suggests through its nature?
Then again, there was no rule against clapping in church, but wow were we afraid to do that. Once, a woman came and performed a song by playing music with a bow and a saw. A saw like you would use to cut wood. And when she was done, we all just looked at each other. Anywhere else we would clap. But here? No, surely we weren’t supposed to. It was startling to me to grow up and discover that other churches clapped regularly – for performances and awards and even after particularly striking sermons.
And yet: entering into freedom, encountering their own shocking survival, the Israelites danced in the desert, and Miriam played her tambourine, leading the way. Dancing is often a marker of celebration. But dancing can also be a prayer.
Democratizing Prayer
Why did Miriam and the other Israelites dance?
When I think about the dancing at weddings, it seems clear that it isn’t just celebratory. People include dancing in these events in ways that echo prayers of thanksgiving and wonder. Thank you for joining these people, Lord. Thank you for making all of us part of their community. Wow, what a gift love is, and You showed it to us first.
Most of us don’t dance in church, though.
Maybe there’s some clapping or hand motions. Maybe you even have a movement choir or liturgical dance group. (I’ll be honest, those are things that will send me running from a church – I’ve got my own baggage.) But have you ever seen a child dancing to a hymn? Or heard a toddler shrieking amidst a musical interlude? We respond to music. I include so much of it in these letters for a reason. Music can help us connect with God in so many ways, and to see prayer where we thought there was none. And dance and movement can do the same thing.
As the late German ballet master Bernhard Wosien put it, “Dance is a meditation in movement. A walking into silence where every movement becomes prayer.”
When we remind ourselves that movement has the potential to be prayer, how does that change our perception of the squirming child in the pews? What if they are just wiggling a little closer to God?
When I began writing this newsletter, I called it Wiggles & Wonder precisely because of my experiences sitting in pews with children and classrooms and also existing in a body that experiences a lot of physical pain and dizziness and that has cognitive differences that substantially impact my ability to just sit still because I’m supposed to. How many college classes did I knit through in college because sitting and listening felt impossible? How often now do I just stand in the back of the church during worship, reading the prayers and singing the hymns but also pacing and answering children’s questions? Sometimes presence looks like all of these things.
Embracing that prayer can look like so many things – like art and silence and anger and, of course, movement – I, in turn, embrace materials like:
Jennifer Grant’s Sing, Wrestle, Spin: Prayers for Active Kids
Meredith Miller’s prompts for Prayers for Kids Who Prefer to Move
Mother Sylvia’s Song & Movement videos
The Order of Julian of Norwich’s Body Prayer
You might choose to print and laminate text-based instructions or pieces like Miller’s prompts, or to make a playlist of movement prayer videos. This can help us easily access tools for prayer when we can’t quite settle ourselves. I’ve done this with breath prayers, which live with my classroom’s silence materials.
Another relevant note for those wiggly feelings: I’ve seen some questions about supporting children in worship floating around different communities as we all settle back into our programming routines. I offer the pew card I’ve developed for my parish settings here, as well as a new booklet for outlining the order of worship and participants, “Who’s Who In Church?,” based on a fairly typical Episcopal Church service.
Resource Round-Up
I know many of us are underwater with program prep right now – and that makes it especially easy to miss out on new and interesting things. Here are a few things you won’t want to miss:
The Godly Play Foundation is offering a book study on Trauma-Informed Children’s Ministry by Dr. Robert G. Crosby and Lori A. Crosby. It runs on Thursdays in October from 2-3pm (EST).
The Rev. Ebody Grisom, one of my most beloved Godly Play colleagues, has a new article over at BuildingFaith about the work of the Equity Audit that we’ve been working our way through for several years now, starting with the formation of an Anti-Racism Task Force in January 2021 and then expanding to include the development of the Beloved Me, Beloved We initiative and our ongoing Equity Audit team (we reconvene post-summer break this week!). This is important work and if you’re a Godly Player (and even if you’re not) and you aren’t keeping up with this conversation, it’s never too late to tune in to these examinations of implicit (and explicit) bias in our programming.
Kelly Latimore’s 2024 Icon Calendar is up for preorders! I know most of us have the standard issue lectionary calendar, but Kelly’s calendars are a piece of art and then not only do you have a calendar, but you have icons you can frame as the months pass by.
Are you headed back to church after being out of routine for the summer? (Or maybe you serve families for whom this is the rhythm?) These questions from the Parenting for Faith branch of the Bible Reading Fellowship, a UK-based group, are great ways to help adults learn more about what children are discovering at church or in the formation programs. Honestly, they’re not bad questions for us to ask ourselves as adults, too!
My programs kick-off this coming Sunday, so this week is full-speed ahead and I expect A LOT of noise and wiggling! In fact, I hope there will be plenty of that joyful buzz around. May your spaces also be blessed with joyful noise.
Peace,
Bird