dance then, wherever you may be…

i am the lord of the dance said he, and i’ll lead you all wherever you may be, and i’ll lead you all in the Dance said  he.

This week was a long week for all of us.  We’ve been stretching and growing and we were getting tired.  We also had the complicated nature of Brother Jed’s visit to campus, where hate was preached and vitriol spread.  Our students stood faithfully each day, with signs saying “God loves you,” and “Where there is hatred let us sow love,”  and “Do you believe in a God of love?  So do we.”  And this was exhausting, whether in the sunshine or in the rain, we consistently heard the language of our religion being twisted and turned into something ugly.

And then Friday came, and with it BLOCK PARTY 2012.  We listed to phenomenal music, welcomed exhausted dental students, people whose children were in the hospital, plenty of students we’d never met.  A unicyclist clapped hands with two Muslims on either side of him, students who had just met, and others who had known each other for four years threw their heads back as we sang about being the change we wished to see in the end.  As the crowd thinned towards the end, and Agape’s performance started to feel like a house concert of sorts, with the remnant of 30 or so that remained, and then we started dancing.  We jumped around and waved our hands and felt the catharsis of the love of God being breathed through music and laughter and a shared understanding that ours was a God of love.

The work of witnessing to a God of love, to Dancing, to living that Love out in our lives is hard, and sometimes exhausting work.  But it is also the root of our joy.  It’s why we dance.  It’s why we laugh.  It’s how we can love abundantly and often.  It’s why we return to the lord of the Dance.