From Different Voices

Reflection

The Lord of the Dance

By Kay Collier McLaughlin

“Traditional square dancing with a dance-caller will follow a mountain-style family supper” the pre-convention news releases said.

So it was that as the wintry sun was tucking away behind the hills surrounding Jenny Wiley State Park, men, women and young people of the 108^th Convention of the Diocese of Lexington re-entered the room where they had spent the day doing the business of the church.  Red-checked tablecloths and bandanas provided a colorful backdrop to collard greens and baked apples, while the sounds of fiddle, guitar and banjo set many a foot to tapping around the tables.

The blackberry cobbler and chocolate pie were still attracting a line-up when the dance-caller invited the diners to take the floor.  And so they came — wearing straw bonnets, baseball caps, western vests, blue jeans, pig tails, Episcopal T-shirts — and big smiles.  The priest in denim do-si-doed with an attorney still in white shirt and tie.  Teen-agers swung partners a decade or so their senior.  Northern Kentucky did a fast-footed foursome with Eastern Kentucky.

Around the perimeter of the floor, friends and acquaintances pulled up chairs to visit , watch and cheer. “I didn’t know the Bishop played the violin.” “It’s a fiddle — and he never has — until tonight!”  “Look at Joe go! Ye-haw!”  Someone dimmed the lights, while the music played brighter and the feet moved faster.

Funny, that some checked tablecloths and mountain music could change things so completely.

An hour or so ago, voices were testy; tension in the air.  Groups huddled, and glanced questioningly at other huddlers.

Dance.  David danced before the Lord.  Jeremiah calls the people of Israel to go forth with a merry throng of dancers as they are rebuilt.  The Psalmist speaks of turning lament into dancing.  The loving father orders music and dancing to welcome home his long-lost son.  For as long as there has been humankind, there has been a turning to this amazing expression of body and spirit known as the dance.  Ancient symbols of dancers carved on cave walls and pottery.  The hard physical work of frontier barn-raisings followed by community dancing.  Wedding celebrations.  The energy of high school hops, from jitterbug through rap.  The ordered beauty of the pas de deux; the sweaty exhilaration of the after-dance with body and soul saturated with the music and the human connection.

Sydney Carter wrote the words that captured the symbol of Christ as the Lord of the Dance, and set them to a Shaker tune.  It kept running through my head that night, in the middle of the fiddling and the dancing:

I came down from Heaven and I danced on earth….

I danced for the scribe and the Pharisee
But they would not dance and they would not follow me
I danced for the fishermen, for James and John
They came to me, and the dance went on.

I danced on Friday and the sky turned black
It’s hard to dance with the devil on your back
They buried my body and they thought I’d gone
But I am the dance and I still went on.

They cut me down and I leapt up high
I am the dance and I’ll never, never die
I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me
I am the Lord of the dance said he.

Dance.  Where two or three or four or more have to choose to step together, however they hear the music.  Where size and shape and talent and experience and opinion don’t matter when we give ourselves to the music, and allow the Lord of the dance.

Dance, then, wherever you may be
I am the Lord of the dance said he
I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me
I am the Lord of the dance said he.

And so we were created.

And so, I choose to dance.

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