Where now the horse and the rider?

"Where now the horse and the rider? where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harp-string, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning?
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?"
(Tolkien, Two Towers)

Where, O Lord, is Your church? Why do I gather alone?
I am still wrestling with this, Abba.
You asked me if I had asked others to gather.
This time I did.
I stepped out, Lord.

And one person did come.

But I am still wondering, Abba.
Where is Your church?

Here I am.
What would you have me do?

A Story of Dance (part III)

. . .even after admitting surrender and hearing the encouragement of my friends, can you believe I still struggled with dancing at that evening service? My feet itched to dance and my heart ached but I stood swaying with doubt, fear as the worship team played.

But God is very persistent. And abounding in mercy. :)

I stepped into an open area in the middle of the sanctuary and I danced. I danced in adoration, praise, surrender and brokenness. He danced with me! My feelings of awkwardness and clumsiness faded in the wonder of His delight. As a new song began, I was kneeling on the ground and I felt very strongly that this song was meant to be danced with fabric. "Oh Abba," I thought, "too bad I don't have any fabric."

But before I could determine how I would dance, a shimmering veil of white dropped over my head. It was a swath of beautiful transparent fabric held in the hands of an Aussie who had flown into Canada the night before to learn and work at my friends' base. Gracefully, she danced over me with the material.

I was overwhelmed.
NO WAY, God, no way! You did this?
Wow.

. . . :)

A Story of Dance (part II)

Back to the Sunday morning church service. . .

    I knew God was calling me to dance with Him but I rebelled. "God, what if I am a distraction to the church? What if I draw their eyes away from you? You are a God of order, right? How can dance here be right? WHY am I so confused about this?!" As I knelt there sobbing I realized that I believed a terrible lie, somehow over the course of time I had let the enemy deceive me into believing that dance had no place in the church, in corporate worship.

If you had asked me about this before that morning, I would have denied it, "Of course dance does! I have lived it!". But the lie had gone far deeper than I knew. And even recognizing it as a lie, I struggled to let it go.

 

    The music came to a close and the pastor read from a passage from on the New Testament letters, stopping to repeat one phrase in particular. I don't remember what the passage was or even the phrase but God spoke to me through it of His promise to me, of the great things He would bring forth. And I cried even harder that He would speak so to me when I was fighting against Him. Again, He asked me to dance when they did music with the offering. Again, I said no.

 

-Interlude-

    At this point, I was a terrible mess of tears and snot, not to mention emotional turmoil: "Abba, I am such a mess!" But, in tender love, God gave me the impression that if He were to be standing there in flesh in front of me, I could wipe the snot off on Him. Gross, maybe, but again I was overwhelmed but how much and how steadfastly He loved me.

-end Interlude-

 

    I stopped bawling long enough to listen to the pastor's message. She spoke about the firstfruits sacrifice and celebration in the Old Testament. In particular, she emphasized God's call for us to thank Him and rejoice before we have seen a full harvest, to praise Him while the seed is still in the ground and anything might happen to it. I listened and was reminded that I am to rejoice and thank God for the ministry of dance even though I can't see it. The harvest is His.

    The morning service ended and I had an eagerly attentive audience in my friend's family who wanted to know what I had thought of the service (her dad pretty much interrogated me, lol). I summarized what I had happened and they encouraged me that I could most definitely dance in their services, that normally there were people dancing. I received their words with mixed feelings: joy, relief, guilt, hope.

 

    That evening, most of my friend's family tromped back into the van to go to the evening church service. Honestly, I did not want to go. I hadn't slept enough in the last few days, I was spiritually/emotionally drained, I was grouchy. But I went and walking through the front doors, I told God that He would have all of me. I was here to worship Him.

(..more coming…)

A Story of Dance (part I)

This is a story, a testimony, a revelation of dance but it is also a beautiful demonstration of God's mercy and grace. On June 1^st, during a Sunday morning church service, He asked me to dance with Him. I buried my face in my hands and I cried because I wouldn't.

 

To give you a better understanding of what happened, I will give you some background. God has given me dance as a gift. I first began to grow in this gift through the Jesus Dance School and a dance ministry during my teen years. I discovered how dance could be a form of intercession but my deepest passion at the time was worship dancing with the church. My experiences over the short life of the dance ministry have impacted me greatly. In time, the ministry died. It happened slowly as members in the church (I never knew who) prompted the dancing to move away from the front to the sides, then to the back.

It was never said directly to me but I was left with the strong impression that dancing was a distraction during worship, that this gift was negatively impacting people and drawing them away from God rather than to Him.

I remember very well the last worship dance practice. I felt that strange peace that surpasses all understanding when the dance leader told us that it was ending. I knelt before God during the dancing and told Him that the gift was His. If I ever danced again, it was to be His choice.

 

That summer, I went with a dance/drama team to perform on the streets during the Olympics in Athens, Greece (which is another strange and beautiful story). God opening up this opportunity for me to dance spoke to me that He would resurrect the gift in His time.

For the next three years, I hardly danced. And often when I did in worship, it felt awkward, out of step, very different from what I had experienced in the dance ministry team.

 

In the fall of 2007, God brought dance to life again. I spent every night during the month of October in intercessory dance, learning from Him. It was profoundly freeing and humbling. But with this re-birth came a terrible ache. A painful longing for something more that still needed to be born and soon a wrenching realization that I had wounds that needed healing.

I heard from many around this time about their own gifting of dance and what God had taught them. It was encouraging and exhilarating but a woman I respect and cherish spoke against dancing. And her words ripped open wounds I hadn't know existed.

And it was good, because God began to heal these wounds.

 

(to be continued)

wounded

(copied from "a place for dance in the church" on the Ted Dekker forum)

I knew that what happened with the church dance team I was part of a few years ago had hurt.
But the recent dance threads and dance-praying I have been doing have made me realize that what I thought was a stage I wound is really a stage V. The scab came off the top, now I'm bleeding all over the place and I don't even know how deep the undermining of this wound goes.

I'm not sure if that was overly personal to post in here but I really feel at a loss. I'm so thankful to have this gift of dance just between me and God. But the deeper I go in that, the more painful the longing to use this gift within the body of Christ becomes.

And how does one do that when one isn't even a part of the institutional church?

-------

Am I just emotionally overwrought right now? Why does this hurt so much?

Abba?