Dancing in the Real World
theologizing from the site of the flesh
the withness of the body
-- AN Whitehead
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Theologizing from the Site of the Flesh"To theologize from the site of the flesh entails attending not only to the historical and social determinations of bodies but also to that which exceeds representation and yet also gives impulse to corporeal transformations: their unruly materiality, their mysterious spirituality." (Mayra Rivera, Professor of Religion, Harvard Divinity School)
Theology as a Dancing Lesson"Chickens dance, people dance, and trees dance. Colors dance, too. So do sounds. Rocks dance as well. Wherever there is a movement there is a kind of dancing. A smile, a frown, a wink, a movement of the body during sleep: all is dancing. Often, in human life, dance emerges through struggle and pain. Grief is a form of dancing, as is turning grief into beauty. This transformation of grief into beauty is what process theologians call creative transformation, or, in the words of Monica Coleman, "making a way of no way." Creative transformation is one way, and not the only way, of turning flesh into spirit and spirit into flesh. You might call it materialized or embodied spirituality. One key to life to dance in whatever ways are possible, by whatever means, for the well-being of life, your own included. Theology at its best is much more than a description of how things were, or how things are, or even how things can be. It offers guidelines for turning spirit into flesh. It is a dancing lesson. (Jay McDaniel)
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Dancing in the Real World
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Theologizing from the Site of the Flesh: Mayra Rivera
'To theologize from the site of the flesh entails attending not only to the historical and social determinations of bodies but also to that which exceeds representation and yet also gives impulse to corporeal transformations: their unruly materiality, their mysterious spirituality. It is perhaps in relation to these un-objectifiable elements that theology should talk about the spirit...I have proposed elsewhere that a theology that truly embraces flesh and materiality may need to speak of spirit-flesh, to emphasize the inseparability of these concepts, where the hyphen marks a boundary of distinction that does not tend to separation. Spirit materializes in flesh; flesh (carne) is indispensable for the spirit’s incarnation—not as an exceptional event, but rather as an inherent dimension of corporeality. Spirit and flesh flow into one another, each transfigures the other. Spirit is not conceived here as a simple being; it does not presuppose completeness or absolute separation, but instead moves in theflux and disruptions of flesh. Being in carne, permeating and soaking all flesh,the spirit does not eliminate the ambiguities of our corporality: ephemeral and tangible, fragmented and manifold, neither whole nor deficient. Pain, difficulty,and failure are not antithetical to the movements of the spirit; we do not dream of pneumatic bodies liberated from flesh."
from "Unsettling Bodies," an article by Mayra Rivera Rivera in the
Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Volume 26, Number 2, Fall 2010, pp. 119-123.
Dancing for All Ages
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Miscellaneous Meanderings
First Steps in a Process Theology of Dance
by Jay McDaniel
Liturgical Dance is a movement of the body in ways that are self-expressive and whole-making.
Every moving body can dance liturgically.
Everybody gets to dance: young and old; feeble and firm; strong and weak. If you move any part of your body, you are a dancer.
It helps to get over the fact that there is one type of body or form of embodied life that is normative for all. It helps to remember that each body is unique and that all have their distinctive form. It also helps to know that our bodies are permeated with what the theologian Mayra Rivera Rivera calls Spirit.
Spirit is a spirit of creative transformation in the world, an animating lure toward goodness and wholeness, truth and beauty, wisdom and creativity. Spirit is in flesh and flesh in spirit. Flesh is the subjective side of embodied life: that side that feels the surrounding world and responds to it from an embodied point of view.
Flesh has creativity that is not reducible to spirit and spirit has creativity not reducible to flesh, but often they breathe together. Dancing is a form of breathing.
Some people dance with their eyes only. And many people who are reluctant to dance in other ways nevertheless dance with images within their own minds. Images have shape and form. They have bodies, too. No thing is disembodied, not even the soul of the universe.
Dance is a human way of participating in a kind of creativity that is also found in the more-than-human world. Bees dance, trees dance, and seas dance. Planets and galaxies are dancing, too. So do machines. Wherever there is something vibrating in any way there is something like dance.
Dance does not need to be called "dance" to be dance. Much of the best dancing is unconscious. Dreams are a kind of dancing, too. And even broken dreams are dancing in their way.
Dancing always occurs in the present moment, but the present moment includes within its horizons the past and future. When embryos move in the womb they are dancing and their dancing includes a felt sense that future movement is possible. This is part of the nature of infancy and youth -- a desire for future movement.
And when ancestors move in our memories they are dancing. Often unconscious memories are seeking us as partners. The sad ones yearn for some way that we might weave them into a more beautiful whole.
Even the soul of the universe -- even the womb-like love in whose heart the universe lives and moves and has its being -- is dancing. The soul includes all the memories and all the hopes. The soul includes the broken dreams and the dreams for fulfillment. In the Jewish tradition we speak of this as the dream for shalom, understood not simply as an absence of violence but the fullness of life.
The soul of the universe has a body, too. The entire universe is the body of this soul. Every movement within the universe moves the heart of the soul and the soul responds by inviting each being and all beings to move in loving ways. As Whitehead puts it: "The love in heaven passes into the world and passes back into heaven." Again and again and again. Always there is the dancing. Beauty is a verb. Sadness is a verb, too.
Every moving body can dance liturgically.
Everybody gets to dance: young and old; feeble and firm; strong and weak. If you move any part of your body, you are a dancer.
It helps to get over the fact that there is one type of body or form of embodied life that is normative for all. It helps to remember that each body is unique and that all have their distinctive form. It also helps to know that our bodies are permeated with what the theologian Mayra Rivera Rivera calls Spirit.
Spirit is a spirit of creative transformation in the world, an animating lure toward goodness and wholeness, truth and beauty, wisdom and creativity. Spirit is in flesh and flesh in spirit. Flesh is the subjective side of embodied life: that side that feels the surrounding world and responds to it from an embodied point of view.
Flesh has creativity that is not reducible to spirit and spirit has creativity not reducible to flesh, but often they breathe together. Dancing is a form of breathing.
Some people dance with their eyes only. And many people who are reluctant to dance in other ways nevertheless dance with images within their own minds. Images have shape and form. They have bodies, too. No thing is disembodied, not even the soul of the universe.
Dance is a human way of participating in a kind of creativity that is also found in the more-than-human world. Bees dance, trees dance, and seas dance. Planets and galaxies are dancing, too. So do machines. Wherever there is something vibrating in any way there is something like dance.
Dance does not need to be called "dance" to be dance. Much of the best dancing is unconscious. Dreams are a kind of dancing, too. And even broken dreams are dancing in their way.
Dancing always occurs in the present moment, but the present moment includes within its horizons the past and future. When embryos move in the womb they are dancing and their dancing includes a felt sense that future movement is possible. This is part of the nature of infancy and youth -- a desire for future movement.
And when ancestors move in our memories they are dancing. Often unconscious memories are seeking us as partners. The sad ones yearn for some way that we might weave them into a more beautiful whole.
Even the soul of the universe -- even the womb-like love in whose heart the universe lives and moves and has its being -- is dancing. The soul includes all the memories and all the hopes. The soul includes the broken dreams and the dreams for fulfillment. In the Jewish tradition we speak of this as the dream for shalom, understood not simply as an absence of violence but the fullness of life.
The soul of the universe has a body, too. The entire universe is the body of this soul. Every movement within the universe moves the heart of the soul and the soul responds by inviting each being and all beings to move in loving ways. As Whitehead puts it: "The love in heaven passes into the world and passes back into heaven." Again and again and again. Always there is the dancing. Beauty is a verb. Sadness is a verb, too.
Where is the dance happening?
The dance is happening in whatever location it is happening. The biggest dance -- the widest location -- is the universe itself. In this dance there are no boundaries at all. There is no audience, no studio, no stage. There are no dress rehearsals. We live in an open universe where new events happen all the time that have never happened before, and that cannot be reversed after they happen.
Sometimes the dancing is quite violent and living beings get hurt. Strictly speaking this kind of dancing is not really dancing. It is self-expressive but not whole-making. We might call it half-dancing or conflicted dancing. A more common name is violence. It can be physical or psychological, individual, or social.
The soul of the universe is a beckoning, within each dancer, to move with others in creatively intense yet non-harmful ways. Sometimes there is great friction between the aims of the soul and the violence of the world. The soul and the world are not dancing together.
But dance is especially beautiful when it is localized. In a world that is often too violent, there can be localized pockets of creativity that are whole dancing: self-expressive and whole-making. These locales can be nurseries and nursing homes, farmers markets and pharmacies, hospitals, and hostels. They can also be studios and theaters.
And if we have eyes to see, we realize that the people in these settings are already dancing, even apart from any formal training in the arts of dance.
Priests-in-the-arts-of-dance are those who use their skills, gained through training, to help others find wholeness in the dancing they are already doing and share with them new possibilities. They have been to seminaries otherwise called "dance studios."
The task of the priest is to help make possible a worship service or a liturgy in which people realize that they are already dancing and get a little better at it, taking joy in it. This can happen in any localized setting. In the liturgy the priests learn as much, if not more, than the congregants. And they learn from the congregants. The boundaries break down and all are priests to the other.
The dance is happening in whatever location it is happening. The biggest dance -- the widest location -- is the universe itself. In this dance there are no boundaries at all. There is no audience, no studio, no stage. There are no dress rehearsals. We live in an open universe where new events happen all the time that have never happened before, and that cannot be reversed after they happen.
Sometimes the dancing is quite violent and living beings get hurt. Strictly speaking this kind of dancing is not really dancing. It is self-expressive but not whole-making. We might call it half-dancing or conflicted dancing. A more common name is violence. It can be physical or psychological, individual, or social.
The soul of the universe is a beckoning, within each dancer, to move with others in creatively intense yet non-harmful ways. Sometimes there is great friction between the aims of the soul and the violence of the world. The soul and the world are not dancing together.
But dance is especially beautiful when it is localized. In a world that is often too violent, there can be localized pockets of creativity that are whole dancing: self-expressive and whole-making. These locales can be nurseries and nursing homes, farmers markets and pharmacies, hospitals, and hostels. They can also be studios and theaters.
And if we have eyes to see, we realize that the people in these settings are already dancing, even apart from any formal training in the arts of dance.
Priests-in-the-arts-of-dance are those who use their skills, gained through training, to help others find wholeness in the dancing they are already doing and share with them new possibilities. They have been to seminaries otherwise called "dance studios."
The task of the priest is to help make possible a worship service or a liturgy in which people realize that they are already dancing and get a little better at it, taking joy in it. This can happen in any localized setting. In the liturgy the priests learn as much, if not more, than the congregants. And they learn from the congregants. The boundaries break down and all are priests to the other.
What is dance about?
The dance is about whatever ideas are communicated through the dancing. They can be about love and hatred, violence and wonder, sadness and stillness, the origins of life and the origins of the universe.
It is a mistake to think that ideas are communicated only through words or images, Ideas are communicated through gestures and movements, too. And sometimes, when words grow stale the movements communicate the ideas much better than words.
Typically the ideas in dance are about our worlds, our local communities, and ourselves. In dancing the ideas, the ideas are given expression so that we can also, if we wish, think about them in verbal terms. But the ideas can be understood even apart from thinking about them.
The ideas that are communicated are not reducible to "information." They are also and perhaps more importantly invitations or beckonings. In the language of Whitehead, they are lures for feeling. Knowing is a form of feeling in which a person understands something. You do not have to know that you know in order to know.
The something that is known need not be peaceful or good or beautiful or happy in order for the dance to be whole-making. Dancing can help us understand truths we might wish were otherwise: violence, grief, conflict, and suffering. Dancing can reveal un-wholeness for us to come to grips with it and create more wholeness. As Teri St. Cloud puts it: "She could never go back and make some of the details pretty. All she could do was move forward and make the whole beautiful."
In this sense dance is deeply prophetic in the Jewish sense. It invites us to take heed of the sadness in life, without pretending it were otherwise, and to sense the possibility for shalom, for the fullness of life, which can emerge from it.
Dance involves faith, too. It is faith in the possibility of wholeness, localized and concrete in the lives of individuals, as catalyzed in the minds and hearts of those who enjoy the dancing.
Why does it matter?
It matters because it helps us become more fully alive, and being alive is what life is all about. Being alive does not mean living forever as a self-conscious individual. The beauty of life includes its finitude.
But being alive does mean enjoying whatever forms of wisdom, compassion, and creativity are available in the moment at hand, knowing that they contribute the beauty of a greater whole. This kind of aliveness is, in the words of Mayra Rivera Rivera, a touch of transcendence. It is rich with abundance, no matter how temporary. It is a way of touching the infinite in the present moment. That is one reason dance matters.
And there is another reason. Dance as a whole-making activity builds upon the fact that our bodies are, in the words of Mayra Rivera, "ephemeral and tangible, fragmented and manifold, neither whole nor deficient." They are permeated with what Rivera calls Spirit.
In the context of process theology, Spirit is the way in which the love of heaven floods into the earth, again and again, always in flux. It is the breathing of the divine reality in the world. This breathing does not eliminate pain and brokenness. It does not eliminate fragmentation caused, not only by injury and disease, but by destructive misrepresentations of the body foisted upon so many by shallow, money-driven, advertising-guiding ethos of corporate capitalism and historical colonialism. Among contemporary Christian theologians such as Rivera, even the Spirit cannot eliminate the ambiguities, but the Spirit can provide the courage to resist the powers of colonization and destruction, offering images of a free and more just "dancing," whatever bodies inform our ongoing, fragile, and beautiful lives.
The dance is about whatever ideas are communicated through the dancing. They can be about love and hatred, violence and wonder, sadness and stillness, the origins of life and the origins of the universe.
It is a mistake to think that ideas are communicated only through words or images, Ideas are communicated through gestures and movements, too. And sometimes, when words grow stale the movements communicate the ideas much better than words.
Typically the ideas in dance are about our worlds, our local communities, and ourselves. In dancing the ideas, the ideas are given expression so that we can also, if we wish, think about them in verbal terms. But the ideas can be understood even apart from thinking about them.
The ideas that are communicated are not reducible to "information." They are also and perhaps more importantly invitations or beckonings. In the language of Whitehead, they are lures for feeling. Knowing is a form of feeling in which a person understands something. You do not have to know that you know in order to know.
The something that is known need not be peaceful or good or beautiful or happy in order for the dance to be whole-making. Dancing can help us understand truths we might wish were otherwise: violence, grief, conflict, and suffering. Dancing can reveal un-wholeness for us to come to grips with it and create more wholeness. As Teri St. Cloud puts it: "She could never go back and make some of the details pretty. All she could do was move forward and make the whole beautiful."
In this sense dance is deeply prophetic in the Jewish sense. It invites us to take heed of the sadness in life, without pretending it were otherwise, and to sense the possibility for shalom, for the fullness of life, which can emerge from it.
Dance involves faith, too. It is faith in the possibility of wholeness, localized and concrete in the lives of individuals, as catalyzed in the minds and hearts of those who enjoy the dancing.
Why does it matter?
It matters because it helps us become more fully alive, and being alive is what life is all about. Being alive does not mean living forever as a self-conscious individual. The beauty of life includes its finitude.
But being alive does mean enjoying whatever forms of wisdom, compassion, and creativity are available in the moment at hand, knowing that they contribute the beauty of a greater whole. This kind of aliveness is, in the words of Mayra Rivera Rivera, a touch of transcendence. It is rich with abundance, no matter how temporary. It is a way of touching the infinite in the present moment. That is one reason dance matters.
And there is another reason. Dance as a whole-making activity builds upon the fact that our bodies are, in the words of Mayra Rivera, "ephemeral and tangible, fragmented and manifold, neither whole nor deficient." They are permeated with what Rivera calls Spirit.
In the context of process theology, Spirit is the way in which the love of heaven floods into the earth, again and again, always in flux. It is the breathing of the divine reality in the world. This breathing does not eliminate pain and brokenness. It does not eliminate fragmentation caused, not only by injury and disease, but by destructive misrepresentations of the body foisted upon so many by shallow, money-driven, advertising-guiding ethos of corporate capitalism and historical colonialism. Among contemporary Christian theologians such as Rivera, even the Spirit cannot eliminate the ambiguities, but the Spirit can provide the courage to resist the powers of colonization and destruction, offering images of a free and more just "dancing," whatever bodies inform our ongoing, fragile, and beautiful lives.
