I\u2019ve been reading some articles about \u201cexperiential worship,\u201d and it inspired me to think about my own experience.\u00a0 After graduating from college, a classmate and I decided to travel in Europe.\u00a0 On New Year\u2019s Eve, December 31, 1964,\u00a0 I was in Paris with a bunch of Greek students we had met.\u00a0 I went to their New Year\u2019s Eve party.\u00a0 Upstairs, people were doing ballroom dancing, but a room downstairs had been decorated to look like a taverna. Ouzo and smoked octopus were available.\u00a0 And they were dancing folk dances.\u00a0 I can still see\/feel myself with a Greek on each side saying \u201cEt maintenant, un … deux … trois …\u201d\u00a0 the dance was a Hasapiko and many years later I rediscovered it at a dance camp.
\nIn the spring of 1965 we spent holy week on a tiny island in the Aegean.\u00a0 We were in the village of Naoussa on the Island of Paros, and the village was so small that if you heard an internal combustion engine you knew it was either THE taxi, or THE truck.\u00a0 Good Friday night we were at the house of Frankie, the rich man of the village living on $25 a month social security from having worked in America.\u00a0 There was our friend Soula, and her brother Andreas who was doing a medical internship in the village.\u00a0 I think we were playing cards, when we heard singing in the street and went to see.\u00a0 Down the hill the priests were leading a long procession.\u00a0 After them, in their robes and carrying crosses, came the flower-covered coffin of Jesus Christ, carried by six villagers, and then all the women, dressed in black, carrying candles, and singing mourning songs.\u00a0 I understood immediately that this was not only the funeral of Jesus Christ, but that each woman was wailing for all her dead, that this was an opportunity to express mourning communally.
\nSaturday night, our friends took us up to the Church.\u00a0 We were each given a candle and a red egg.\u00a0 The church was crowded.\u00a0 It took us a little while to realize that the men were on one side and the women on the other.\u00a0 So we moved to the women\u2019s side.\u00a0 Up in front, behind a carved screen, we could hear the priests chanting in Greek.\u00a0 With a shout of \u201cChristas anastas!\u201d (Christ is risen!) they came out from behind the screen with lighted candles, and lit the candles of the first row of people who immediately turned to light the next row.\u00a0 In no time at all, the candle flames filled the church, and the people burst out the door, still shouting \u201cChristas anastas!\u201d past the bonfire of Judas, and down into town to sing and dance as they usually do each night.\u00a0 We hadn\u2019t realized til then that holy week had been exceptionally quiet.
\nThe red eggs? belonged to some ancient, probably fertility, ritual.\u00a0 You turned to your neighbor and banged the eggs together.\u00a0 The one that didn\u2019t break \u201cwon\u201d, whatever that meant.\u00a0 We never did find out.
\nMy next step was when I was living in Brunswick Maine, and found out that there was a local folkdance group that met Wednesday nights.\u00a0 I went and loved it.\u00a0 A synchronicity happened that first night, a woman came in with a record under her arm and wanted to teach a simple dance.\u00a0 We lined up shoulder to shoulder.\u00a0 It was 3 steps moving to the left, arms go down, and 3 steps in place, arms come up.\u00a0 The music started with bagpipes and immediately I was on a moor in Scotland with a bonfire and a full moon rising.\u00a0 Dottie wound us into the tight spiral at the end.\u00a0 It turned out the music was by Alan Stivell, a harpist from Brittany.\u00a0 I had never heard of Brittany, but I immediately realized that this was the music and dance of my Celtic ancestors (Scots and Irish.)\u00a0 I had always envied the Greeks and the Israelis their ethnic music and dance, and now I found my own ethnic heritage.\u00a0 Within a very few years I traveled to Brittany and went to a number of \u201cfest-noz\u201d, night festivals, with a band and 300 people dancing in long lines.\u00a0 A whole part of myself woke up and rejoiced.
\nI used to joke that I went to Wednesday folkdance the way other people went to Church.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t have the language to say that it was feeding my soul, but that was what was happening.\u00a0 When I moved to Franconia New Hampshire, I took a tape of my favorite dances and started a small folkdance group.\u00a0 I got very sick, and had to stop teaching dance.\u00a0 As I was starting to feel better, a friend told me that there was going to be \u201cSacred Circle Dancing on the green in Danville Vermont, to celebrate the Fall Equinox.\u00a0 \u201cSacred Circle Dancing, what\u2019s that?\u201d\u00a0 So I went and found a circle of people doing a dance I already knew, around a centerpiece made of a scarf, a candle, a bowl of water, and a feather.\u00a0 Well of course!\u00a0 I already knew the traditional dances carried sacred energy, but here it was being acknowledged.
\nNeedless to say, I went to the first workshops on this new\/old way of dancing.\u00a0 Many of the dances were traditional, but there were a lot of new choreographies too.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been teaching this dance ever since.\u00a0 I also used an inheritance from my family to build a building, Neskaya Movement Arts Center, deliberately designed as sacred space for movement arts that are also spiritual practices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve been reading some articles about \u201cexperiential worship,\u201d and it inspired me to think about my own experience.\u00a0 After graduating from college, a classmate and I decided to travel in Europe.\u00a0 On New Year\u2019s Eve, December 31, 1964,\u00a0 I was … Continue reading