Articles by Dancing Spirit

SPIRIT OF THE HARVEST (Published September 2002)

It is mid August, and this morning, as I walked out into the garden, I could feel the change in the air. Maybe a little cooler, a little damper. But more than that, there's a sweetness. It's the subtle scent given off by the ripening bounty in the garden I've tended so lovingly all summer long. I pass the grape vines, and sure enough, there are the bunches of grapes, ripe and ready for harvest. I taste one. Mmm, not like the sugary, watery, sterile ones in the super markets. These are the old-fashioned, sweet, tart Concord grapes with the big seeds. They make the finest jelly. And red, luscious cherry tomatoes are ready for picking. I wrap a few in basil leaves and eat them for breakfast, right off the vine. No need to worry about poison chemicals here.

This garden is my umbilical cord, it ties me to Mother Earth. It keeps me in step with the circle dance of nature. It connects me to my ancestors. I take up my gathering basket, and circle the garden, filling it with grapes, tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. I am reminded once again of how the Earth mother cares for us, how she provides all we really need. My cup runneth over.

In olden times, this harvest season was cause for great celebration. Lammas, August first, was the first harvest of the grain in northern Europe and was a major festival day. And the Native people of the eastern woodlands celebrated the ceremony of the Green Corn or Busk at about this time.

I, too, have a reason to celebrate. Now I can reap the results of the hard work that went into the planting, and nurturing. Not that the work is over. This season is perhaps my busiest. The tomatoes and peppers will be made into salsa, the cucumbers into pickles, the grapes into jelly. But it is a labor of love. Soon my house will be filled with the steamy smells of vinegar and pickling spice, reminding me of my grandmother’s kitchen. And through the winter, the Spirit of the harvest will live on, preserved in these foods, reminding me with every taste, of the bounty of Mother Earth.

DANCING FOR PEACE (published March 2003)

The most recent issue of Utne Reader (Jan-Feb 2003) has an article entitled "Why We Love War-and what we can do to prevent it anyway" by Lawrence Leshan. It begins by saying that "To understand why humans go to war, and have done so throughout history, we have to acknowledge certain psychological facts. War promises to fulfill some fundamental human need or tension. One central human tension is the problem of how to be both an individual and a part of the larger group. . On the one hand is the drive to be more and more unique and individual, to heighten one's experience and being. On the other hand is the drive to be a part of something larger, a full-fledged member of the tribe." The article goes on to mention "two different means to satisfy these drives simultaneously and without contradiction. The first involves turning to one of the schools of esoteric or spiritual development which espouse various meditative techniques. The author comments, "the problem is that the meditative path is too lengthy and difficult for most people”. Historically, there is a second means of resolving this tension between our conflicting needs for singularity and group identification: war. Though war clearly does not deliver exactly what it promises, it does offer temporary solutions to psychological problems for a very large percentage of the population. Leshan feels that "any serious effort to protect ourselves against war" should "encourage the use of alternate realities-as often achieved during meditation, play, listening to or playing music," and, of course, dancing!

Leshan's descriptions of both the path of meditation and the path of war could describe what many of us have experienced in our dancing circles! Many have felt both "the Way of the Many" in which "we view ourselves as separate and individual" while we are dancing, and "the Way of the One", where we feel ourselves "as part of the total cosmos, within which nothing, including ourselves is separate from anything else."

A Circle Dance teacher, Jane, in Vermont wrote to me, “ Offering dance and other community nurturing activities at a time of global stress is the path of peace . . . the only antidote to war. Offering thoughts and words of wholeness, words that refresh our irrefutable connection to all beings on Earth is also the path of peace . . . the only antidote to war. Offering in each moment the belief that every person alive is capable of making life-affirming choices is also the path of peace . . . the only antidote to war. So when we gather to dance, in tiny circles, in great circle-melding gatherings in peace rallies or at other peace initiatives, let us always offer what we love and cherish as the path of peace . . . our togetherness in spite of our great diversity . . .our love of specific individuals and places, . . our joy in creating, if only for a moment, the profound harmonies of wholeness”.

Another circle dancer in Canada wrote, " Our Circle Dances include music and dances from around the world. I feel that I have learned so much about many of the different cultures of the world. Dancing to music from different ethnic communities, whether from long ago or today, opens their world to me and I feel closer to them." Dancing is a wonderful way to hold ourselves in the 'sensory' mode of perceiving in which it is so much more difficult to see 'them' as different from 'us' since 'we' are listening to the same music and dancing the same dances.

Our dance lifts us in its ability to carry our love for the sacredness of Earth, Air, Fire and Water manifesting as trees and birds and four-leggeds and two-leggeds . . . It carries our love for the sun, the moon and the stars ever-present above us, calling us to look up while our lovely feet create beautiful patterns on Earth below.

I don't know how many of you are familiar with “Chaos theory” a phrase coined by Professor James Yorke, this year's winner of the prestigious Japan Prize for his contribution to science. "Chaos" is a mathematical concept in non-linear dynamics for systems that vary according to precise deterministic laws but appear to behave in random fashion." Basically, the theory predicts that an act which appears to us to be small, distant, seemingly random and irrelevant can have huge life- and universe-changing consequences. In one of his books, he tells a story about butterflies. How the flapping of their tiny, delicate wings somewhere on, say, the South American continent, can influence a storm in upstate New York or Southern California. The theory applies to more than just the weather, it can be used to explain the course of history, HIV/AIDS, interplanetary gravitational pulls, and events in our own messy lives.

Perhaps Prof. Yorke thinks he has "discovered" this phenomenon, but the concept has long been known to aboriginal people the world over. "Mitakuwe oyasin, All my relations - we are all related - everything is connected." This is the basis of much sympathetic magic, ritual and ceremony.(why does modern science never believe anything until it can describe it mathematically?)

So, if butterflies flapping their wings can have affects on the weather thousands of miles away, let us keep in our hearts the belief that our dancing feet, weaving circles of peace, can affect the course of human history. Let us dance, widdershins, circles to banish the darkness, the ignorance that separates the human family. Let us dance, sunwise, circles to open our hearts to the light of a new Dawn of peace and enlightenment. Let us bind, with grapevine steps, the spells we weave of love and peace. And seal the spell with a kiss, to all our relations, and our Mother the Earth. Dancing is our olive branch, our love made manifest, our hope arrayed in all the colors and sounds of existence.

Dancing is our purpose and our pleasure
Dancing is our path of peace.