NaPoWriMo Day 5 - They Danced, They Died. Hallelujah! I'm No Dancer.

For day five of National Poetry Writing month one of the prompts was based around a tragedy that took place in Boston in 1925.  The ceiling of a dance club collapsed and forty-four people died.  I wrote a not very good poem before getting out this morning in which someone is pleased to see God's will being done.  Reading later I found that there were preachers who had said such things - just as there are preachers after every tragedy talking about God's will.  It's awful that some have such a view of a God who is meant to be love.

And then I happened upon a long hymn.  And realised it is in a book that still adorns my shelves.  I wrote this before rushing out of the house to go and write some more:

In my Catholic days I was a big fan of Saint Louis-Marie Grignon de Monfort, author of True Devotion to Mary, Secret of the Rosary, and many other works. I made the act of total consecration according to his way of doing things. I hold very different beliefs now but still have his complete works on my shelves, books that are a part of my history.

I wrote the following lines this morning and then looked up to see if anyone actually said things like this. There were Christians of the day denouncing jazz. Of course there were, and evangelicalism and fundamentalism were on the rise in the US. The papers and tracts called “The Fundamentals” from where we get the word fundamentalism were published the previous decade. In my fundamentalist Protestant days I owned them too.

I quickly found a hymn by Louis-Marie, reproduced on a Catholic forum I used to be an part of. No, you can't have my forum name! Here's the penultimate verse of his poetry:

God often severely punishes
Dancers with sudden death,
In a moment vomiting
Their accursed souls.
From balls and games,
Suddenly they fall into hell.

The full thirty-eight verse song can be found at http://forums.avemariaradio.net/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=159277

Yeah, I'm God obsessed. Give me another ten years and I might have worked the scars of my versions of faith out of my flesh.

I'm not sure Louis-Marie would be very impressed by the music and dance events held at St. Dominic's RC Church centre in Newcastle. I'm not impressed by these lines. Head struggling again so I've constrained myself to 5 syllable lines for no apparent reason!

Today I will dance

With King David's joy.

Yahweh has spoken.

My God has judged them.

They will dance no more

To vulgarity of jazz.

Love of the Charleston

Sent them all to hell

Crushed by sinfulness.

God damned the Pickwick.

Judgement on evil:

Swift, sure, certainty.

And I watched, laughing

As he completed

Purifying work.

Forty-four lay crushed

Their unrolled stockings

Testified to guilt.

Erotically

They writhed. Bodies

Serpent contorted.

Righteousness triumphs.

Their flesh is broken

As hearts never were.

God granted them grace

Warned them fair by fire.

They wouldn't listen.

Three months to turn back

From their speakeasy

To God's easy speech.

Their fault. Their deaths, just

Like the club ceiling,

Are on their own heads.

I never entered

What man could resist

Dancing straight to Hell?

Fallen to foul sex

Short skirts can only

Be temptation.

One step through the door

One sight of woman,

Her flesh uncovered

Would surely wrest me

From the bosom

Of my sweet Mary.

Jesus has spoken.

Please, will you listen?

He calls you to life.

Live in repentance:

His holiness makes

America great again.

Prompt 4 - The Dance Of The Forgotten Mind

The fourth prompt taken from http://thinkwritten.com/365-creative-writing-prompts/   I plan to free write from each of the 365 prompts given on that page.  If you feel like it, join in and write from a prompt and post your writing as a comment here.  Share in the freedom!

Dancing: Who’s dancing and why are they tapping those toes?


I am.  It's me.   I'm dancing.  Except I'm not dancing am I?  I have not been allowed to dance.  Not because of any proscription passed down to me by an authority.  I was never one of the religious extremists who proclaim that dancing in the church is a sin or one of the extremists who proclaim that dancing outside the church is a sin.  Look it up!  Both of those strange views have been taught and laid down as laws.  But my law came from within.  Don't dance.  Don't let go.  I think too it came in part from my parents.  I remember at one point I wanted to dance.  I wanted to join a dance group and take lessons and I asked whether I could.  I was told by my mother in no uncertain terms "You can't do that.  It's silly.  And it's for girls."  I remember the conversation very clearly although my mother swore years later that she would never have said such things.  Sorry mother.  You said them.  And I, foolish child, believed you.  Just like when that song by 10CC was playing and you looked at me and said very bluntly, "See, big boys DON'T cry."  And so I didn't cry.  And I didn't dance.  Except in times of rebellion and friendship in Bradford nightclubs or infrequent ceilidhs.  Even now I display reticence at a ceilidh.  It takes a great deal of encouragement before I am one of the dancers rather than one of the watchers.

Nevertheless.  I am.  It's me.  I'm dancing.

That's the plan anyway.  From experience and desire it's the plan.

I went dancing last year.  Once.  Just once.  It was one of the best experiences of the whole year and yet it was not repeated.

I knew such dancing happened.  I'd heard of it a year before and though I wanted to experience it for myself I wasn't able to do it.  I thought I wouldn't fit there.  I thought I couldn't fit.  I had such rules, such crazy beliefs.  I kept myself apart from living because I thought I didn't belong.  I find I still keep myself apart.  This year I want to break with apartness.  This year I want to embrace the atonement.  Not atonement with a holy God.  But atonement with life, with living, with the fire of Spirit, and with myself.  This year I will dance again.  I promise myself that.

Last year I left the church.  And my Sunday evening was empty.  I'd been the kind of Christian who would feel guilt about missing Sunday worship.  After giving up church - initially just for Lent - Sunday felt empty.  The first Sunday I filled the evening with an evening of healing and music and meditation led by a crazy woman walking a shamanic path.  I can't claim that any healing occurred but it was an amazing experience to sit in the half-light as she sang and drummed.

The second Sunday I decided to go for it:  I would dance.  I would join another bunch of crazies and see what happened.  And if it was awful I wouldn't mind.  All I would have lost would be an evening and a few pounds.  All I would have gained would be an experience and a little more self knowledge.

I can't express what it took for me to attend.  I can't express the inner battles I had to overcome.  I can't express the inner discourse that had kept me away for a year and the strength it took to go to a place in which I would undertake to join a previously self-forbidden world and meet with a group of strangers.  The inner battles continue.  I've found so many excuses not to return.  An initial reason.  Sometimes other good reasons.  And, if I am honest, a whole load of flimsy excuses too.

I walked from the station to the place of the dance.  Determined.  I could do this.  I would do this.  Just go and see.  Have fun.  I would dance and feel no shame.  God.  How can someone feel so much shame about dancing?  How can they feel so much shame about creative urges?  How can someone reject parts of themselves that are so wonderful, crushing them and despising them?  I could answer those questions.  Because I lived the answers.

As I walked, even the graffiti seemed to laugh at me.

I laughed back.  Hah!  I'll show you.  I'm going.  I'm going to have fun.  And no order on a wall or in the recesses of a mind will stop me.  No more banning.  I'm going to be free.

I arrived at the dance venue.  It turned out I was a little early and ended up helping to provide the lighting - candles placed all the way round the room, although there was daylight too.  The people smiled and welcomed me and I was surprised to find the space felt safe.  Somehow I knew.  These weren't going to be people who looked at me as some kind of strange interloper.  They weren't going to reject me or critique me for never having danced, or for whatever I did or didn't do that night.  This was a place of acceptance.  A place of life.  A place of wonder in each person.

That evening what we would all take part in was called "Live Rhythms."  It's like "5 Rhythms" but whereas that is usually danced from a mix of recorded music this would be from a live band.  I'm not going to explain 5 Rhythms - you can look it up if you wish.  All I knew was that the dance would be a "wave".  Whatever that was.  And that from start to finish there would be a focus on five rhythms.

We began with warmup exercises of movement, alone and then in pairs.  Pairs.  I usually find that part stressful.  I very nearly always arrive at things alone and finding a pair is tough for me.  I can retreat into a shell of the recluse at such moments and it feels like I am become invisible as friends pair off with each other, each person not alone while I stand alone.  To pair with a stranger is the start of social and I freak inside.  And yet.  And yet.  On this occasion it was simple.  The person closest to me just smiled and we joined in the movement, much of which was mirroring.

Afterwards, as the 5Rhythms were introduced I sat on the floor.  Not at the edge.  Not by a wall where I could have cut myself off.  But close to the centre.  I felt safety.  I felt protection.  I felt that it was all going to be okay.  I felt a strong sense that it was right for me to have walked in the door.

We began.  And I moved.  To begin with I did not stand.  I found myself moving in ways I had never moved before.  It was glorious.  Glorious and became more glorious and I let go.  Truly I did.  I let go.  For the first time.  Perhaps the first time ever, but certainly the first time for many years.

I moved and felt the rhythms, the beat, the melodies and moved and flowed and - to the best of the abilities of a body which is unfit and inflexible - expressed beauty, joy, the flame of life.

I moved and felt and allowed myself to feel more and then the strangest thing happened.  The most fantastic thing.

I lost my mind.

I'm a head person.  I stay in my head.  It doesn't switch off.  I think.  I stay in my head and refuse to leave it and see what else there might be in my heart, in my soul, in the stars, in the fragrance of Spirit as she washes over us all continually.  I don't leave my head.  Ever.

And yet.

I lost my mind.

I forgot my mind.

And in those moments of forgetfulness there was total freedom.

In those moments of forgetfulness there was revelation.

In those moments of forgetfulness I experienced life in abundance in a way I'd never known in decades of churches and mental discipline.

I lost my mind and found light and healing.

After the wave we sat, in circle.  We shared of the experience and I couldn't stop smiling and I vowed to myself to return.

I haven't returned.

Initially there was a reason.  Days later I hurt my knee and the pain was pretty bad.  The following Sunday I tried to dance.  It hurt so much but I walked up the hill to the dance venue and arrived at the entrance.  But the pain.  I knew I couldn't do it.  And I walked away in a flood of tears.

But the knee recovered.  And I did not return.  I kept seeing news of events online and kept wanting to go, dance again.  I did not return.

So who is dancing?  Whose feet are tapping?  (I'm not sure my feet tapped at all that night)

Who?  Not me.  No, not me.

I will dance again.  I will.  I will meet those people and join the wave of the free again.  I will.

And soon.  I vow that to myself.  The dance will be a fragment of the plan without a plan.  When the Sunday dances begin again I will attend and I will dance.  I promise myself that.  Because I deserve it.

I deserve to lose my mind again and to smile and laugh and cry with the crazies.