Dancing with the Divine
The Via Positiva: Dancing with the Divine
Dancing With the Light
Our theme for this quarter is dancing with the divine. Tonight, we consider the divine that presents itself in the gift of light. Sunday was the Summer Solstice—the longest day of the year, a day with more light than any other day, so our theme fits the physical cycle of the world.
Light is important in scripture. The opening chapter of Genesis finds the Holy One saying, “Let there be light.” And the Bible closes with a declaration in Revelation that “There will be no more night…the Lord God will give them light.” Remember the words of Jesus to “let our light shine.” And his warning that if “the light in us is darkness, great indeed is the darkness.”
So this quarter, walking on the Via Positiva, we are challenged to tilt toward the light. It is in the light of the divine that we are confronted with the mystery of the Holy. Albert Einstein said, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.” This is the source of faith. The awe we feel in the face of mystery is the beginning of faith and this awe is the heart of the Via Positiva. As stated on the website of Jubilee! Asheville: The Via Positiva is about “discovering beauty and awe in each other, in ourselves, and in the fascinating world around us.”
So we are thinking about dancing with the light. With the summer solstice comes the fullness of sunlight. The longest days of the year reach their peak. Gardens grow wild with possibility. The lush green mountains rise above the wild orange lilies. Sunscreen use expands. Dancing with the Divine begins with the flood of light. The Via Positiva invites us to see the Light—in creation, in ourselves, in each other. Life may not be all sweetness and light, but this season invites us to invite in the light, to dance with it or at least to tilt toward it.
Tilt toward the light. What would it mean to know that you are the place where God lives, moves and breathes, and has his being? That you are the place where God shows up? Hildegard of Bingen said: “Be not lax in celebrating. Be not lazy in the festive service of God. Be ablaze with enthusiasm. Let us be an alive, burning offering before the altar of God.”
You are invited to be the light that the world’s darkness needs. We are loved just as God created us to be. Recognize that and tilt toward the light, dance with the light, and experience more light, more love, more awe, more God.
How may we dance with the Light and not become, sometimes unknowingly, prisoners of the dark?
We dance with the light when we are willing to enter the arena. To believe something creates an obligation to make that belief known and to act upon it within the arena. If you believe in love as the most powerful reality there is, then act in love as you engage the issues that affect the quality of life for everyone. One of the reasons I enjoy this season of the year is that it is full of energy. Summer is a season for activity—taking trips, working in the yard, gathering with friends, swimming, biking, hiking. Activity. The Via Positiva is a high energy Via. And we need this energy because it is easy to go slack with pessimism. To believe that nothing can be different, nothing can be changed.
We start off with high resolve—we are going to make a difference in this world, but the way is difficult and the challenges are great and after a while we just get tired. We become dull. We fall victim to the sin of acedia, what the ancients called the “sin of the noonday sun.” That may be where our nation is at this particular time in its history. A country that is founded on such high and noble ideals—“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights” such as “happiness” and the “pursuit of liberty.” But there is such tension and disagreement in today’s America. It makes one tired. And we want to quit. How do we reenergize our spirits? By dancing with the light. By listening to what Abraham Lincoln called the “better angels of our nature.”
Einstein said that awe is the key—keeping alive the capacity to be surprised, to be stopped in your tacks by the mysterious, to open yourself to being met by the shimmering, quivering gift of aliveness. Poet Mary Oliver gives these instructions for living: Pay attention, Be astonished, Tell about it.
When we dance with the light, we discover an inexhaustible well of creativity and an endless capacity for surprise.
We dance with the light when we allow ourselves to be treated to the mystery of nature’s beauty. That may be one of the best reasons to go on a vacation—it is an opportunity to simply take time to look around and marvel at all there is to see. We don’t have to go to some exotic place for this to happen. It can happen in our own yard or house. Just open yourself to the mystery of your place and let it remind you of what a gift every moment of every day is. Jesus said consider the lilies—he spoke of the miraculous love that held sparrows—he talked about the sun and wind and rain and saw in all these natural things the light of divinity. Do you think Jesus ever had a bad day? Probably. Was Jesus ever bored? I cannot imagine that he was. He seemed to have a special capacity to look at everything, whether it was a child at play or a leper in need of healing or a woman in need of acceptance, with an attitude of wonder and delight over what possibility God was bringing to his world in that particular encounter. Writer, Annie Dillard said we are put here to pay attention. You never know how special ordinary things are until you take note of them.
We dance with the light when we open ourselves to ideas never considered. One of the wisest things and best gifts we might give ourselves is to intentionally seek out people who are different from us—people whose skin color is different, whose culture is different, whose historical experience is different from ours. What blessings and what wisdom might await us if we are willing to explore untried relational paths? The irregular people God puts in your life may be the best blessings you will ever receive. If ever we are going to learn how to live in harmony on this globe, we must come to the place where we are willing to embrace diversity and celebrate it as a gift. We must remind ourselves that different is not deficient, it is just different. That attitude can tilt you toward the light that might shine from someone who you would regard as not as good as you are, not as moral as you are, not as smart as you are. We tilt toward the light when we are willing to intentionally embrace the different.
We dance with the light when we are willing to admit that we do not have all the information we need to make final decisions. Grace is such a surprising reality. Just when we think we have all the information we need to declare this or that is the truth or the way things always must be, we find another way revealing itself and beckoning us to follow a new and untried path. Who knows what discoveries await if we will not close ourselves up in rooms of certainty? Can you live in anticipation of the surprises God has yet in store for you? Who can predict when the bush may burn, or the sky cleave? These are the days for anticipation. Live with the thought that begins the day with: I wonder what surprise God will bring to me today? And then be ready to have your breath taken away as some moment of holy beauty crashes over you like a surprise wave at the beach.
We dance with the light when we are aware that the light is shining all the time. “In him we live and move and have our being,” said St. Paul. And, “God is nearer than our breathing.” You have been made in the image of God, the Bible teaches. That means that you cannot go to Costco or drive down a busy street or have a meal in a restaurant without seeing the light of God shining in the lives of people around you. And others see that light shining in you. You are the light of God. On Sunday at Jubilee! Asheville the congregation sang, “I am light, I am light.” And the more that simple phrase was repeated the more it dawned on me that it is true. We are light…we are revealers of the holy…we are signs of the divine in the now. So, in the words of Jesus, let your light shine, now and always.
We dance with the light when we realize that ultimately everything is connected to everything else, that ultimately the only way to live in this world is to be a mystic. Now there is a word that gives fundamentalists a bad case of indigestion. Mystic. Mainline Christians think it refers to some new-age poppycock and secular folks think it refers to anything we don’t really understand.
But in reality “mystic” means none of these things. Mystic refers to “one.” That’s it. A mystic is someone who is unified, together, all parts in harmony. Not a bad thing, don’t you think? We humans like to divide things, all while seeking unity. We divide our days by minutes and hours, calendars, and clocks. We divide our lives by birthdays and anniversaries, victories and failures, milestones and memories, births, and deaths. We divide each day of our lives into job and recreation, eating and sleeping, shopping and lovemaking, cooking and driving, partying, planning, parenting…you get the idea.
But no matter how much we separate the various parts of our lives, no matter how much we pigeonhole our activities, the truth is we have but one life. One. No more. No less. One precious life.
Which means that whatever you do, even the smallest thing, affects everything else. That is why dancing with the light is so important. Every time you lay down your money for some food or trinket, every conversation you have, every movie you watch, every kindness you share, not to mention every grudge you hold, every worry, every delight…not one of these bits and pieces of you can be isolated. Every bit is part of you for you are one.
We often think of the earth as divided into dirt, air, water, animal, vegetable, mineral. We mentally divide the human community into nations and races, religions and governments, rich and poor, smart and dumb. But the truth is, we are one. Only one. Each of us a part of the whole, connected to every other part.
A basic confession for the ancient Hebrews was: Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad. Literally: “Listen…the Lord our God is One.” Echad. One. Whether you believe in God or in Allah or in the Big Whatever, it really doesn’t matter. What matters is how you live. If you live as if it’s all one, as if there is finally no separation within each of us or between each of us and the rest of creation, you are a mystic, you are dancing with the light. Because mystics seek oneness with and within everything and everyone.
This is the dance we are invited to participate in with all our being. Because this is what love is all about: connecting, uniting, bringing together—reminding us and acknowledging that in the big picture, we are all one and share in the cosmic dance of life.
The Via Postivia—Dancing with the Divine. Oh Yeah!
Chris Andrews (6/21/21) www.jubileepioneers.org