Mourning into dancing…

“You have turned my mourning into dancing” declares the Psalmist.

On day ten of Covid fuzziness my brain isn’t functioning as well as it might - but I am feeling a little bit better, and today’s line was very faint so I’m hoping for a first negative tomorrow and that this might now soon pass. I wrote an article for our Circuit magazine the other week about taking your partners. I’m going to share some of that again this week here.

When I was at school, I used to dread sports events where you had to stand in a line and wait for someone to pick you as their partner. No one wanted to be my partner because my ability sport wise was pretty spectacularly bad! I also used to dread school discos or dances. I’d just stand and watch from the side of the hall. I was too scared to ask a girl to dance with me. Childhood for the shy and introvert could be tough! 

I’ve been thinking about partners a lot recently. Maybe the Church has in recent years become insular and isolated in her communities. Maybe we haven’t been brave enough to look for partners to work with us, because we’ve been told sacred and secular don’t mix. Maybe we have convinced ourselves no one would want to dance with us so we don’t ask if we can join in. Maybe we’ve lost confidence that we have something we can offer other people who live in the same place as us. Maybe we’ve simply forgotten the joy of just joining the dance of vibrant life with others. 

So here’s a story about church a:

Towards the end of last year, the minister spotted that the town Lions club were looking for a space to open a community larder for the town. Ten minutes later he had contacted the folk at church and suggested we might offer them our unused little Sunday school room. The Church Council met a month later and agreed unanimously to give them the room just asking for a donation now and again for heat and light. He then began to join in some planning meetings with the Lions, a Community Care and the local Morrisons Community Champions. A survey was done whether the food shops and pubs would give excess food to us. The response was very positive. An appeal went out across the town for volunteers. Again, this was very positive. An appeal for fridges went out. Fridges were donated.

While the minister was on sabbatical, the little room was painted, and updated with old Sunday school benches removed, a new floor laid and shelving put up. This was done by church members and members of the Lions working together. The larder opened in April once a week on a Wednesday between 12 and 2. The minister returned in May to find each week a steady queue of people using it. A few weeks later, the church decided it would try serving coffee as a church. It was amazed at the response! The hall was buzzing with people of all ages, so much so they are now doing coffee every Wednesday from 11.30. The church has become alive, people know where it is, it is part of serving the town with others, and amazingly it’s had new people come to church on a Sunday and there is a baptism in the autumn. All because it is now open and accessible. 

Can we survive alone? All of our churches are struggling to find people to take on the jobs, we worry about money, our buildings lie empty a lot of them in the week. It could be people around our churches are waiting for us to invite them to join us in doing something. It could be there is an opportunity others are thinking about, our churches might help solve. What do our communities need? Have we ever asked? In church a barriers have been broken down. Working in partnership is fun and church a has found the view some people had of church (and the minister!) has been changed.

But as well as partnership with others and dancing with them, Psalm 30 invites us again to dance with God. A God who turns our mourning into dancing. A God who comes to our raw state and says come with me, this isn’t how it need always be.

Henri Nouwen, the great spiritual writer, wrote a book called “ Turn my mourning into dancing: finding hope in tough times” and he says this:“Mourning makes us poor; it powerfully reminds us of our smallness. …And as we dance, we realize that we don’t have to stay on the little spot of our grief, but can step beyond it.  We stop centring our lives on ourselves.  We pull others along with us and invite them into the larger dance. …As we dance and walk forward, grace provides the ground on which our steps fall.  Prayer puts us in touch with the God of the Dance.”

Sometimes we stay mourning for a long time. Remember Queen Victoria. When we grieve, it takes time to move out of that place of pain and numbness and we can’t be rushed. Even having to be indoors away from people for nearly three weeks because of Covid first in Lis and then in me, I’ve begun to feel rubbish not just physically but mentally. There’s only so much daytime tv you can stand. Sometimes you just don’t think you are ever going to get out of where you are, although I’m very glad my positive line this morning was VERY faint so I have hope this might soon be over, but then I see Covid cases on the rise around me and I just now want it gone! But staying mourning isn’t how God intends us to be. 

That phrase of Nouwen is a powerful one and the choice we have whether to mourn for ever (or moan for ever) or step out in faith joining the Lord of the dance wherever he leads us. So here’s Church b’s story:

Church b hit a major problem which it had to solve quickly somehow. A Church Council was called chaired not by their own minister, as he was on sabbatical, but by the other minister in the Circuit who they didn’t know very well. The minister suggested all sorts of ideas to them to be told they were too old. But then they had a discussion about possibilities if they would just be open to them. Arms started to unfold. They then had another meeting a few weeks later, they’d found a way to solve the problem which wasn’t easy but then ideas flowed out of them about what they could do to try and grow their little church a bit. The minister wasn’t present. They started to own their future. The minister received a report from them after their second meeting and wasn’t expecting such positivity. Maybe it took the unsolvable problem to lead church b into a new narrative. Time will tell. 

Dancing with others and dancing with God. Both would if we did them lead to a church and a society that was fun and inclusive and vibrant. A church and society of mourning and moaning and negativity will die. What have we to celebrate, right now? Church a got a surprise with new partners joining them or them joining other partners, seeing we are stronger with others; church b hit a wall that might have toppled them. Out of the depths they decided to pick themselves up, and all it needed was some words of encouragement and a determination they do not want to die. 

When I was so shy. I didn’t want a partner so I’d stand on the edge, alone. Or I’d not be chosen by someone else, perceived as having nothing to offer to any partner.

As churches we’ve shunned the world, wanting to keep sacred and secular separate. So the world has passed us by. The time is right to be more open to working with others doing good things building community together, and the minister of church a would tell you conversations about church and God happen as trust is built. It’s exciting.

Maybe too we’ve forgotten how to dance with God. Where’s the joy gone?

Maybe the task of the Church is to remember those last words of the Psalmist: “…you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, so that my soul may praise you and not be silent.” Proclaiming, living with and celebrating the God of new beginnings and tremendous hope.

So this week as well as hearing about church a and church b remember this story and be encouraged. Desmond Tutu liked to dance! I want to end this week with this story told by Jim Wallis in his fabulous book “God’s Politics”:

“The former South African archbishop Desmond Tutu used to famously say, “We are prisoners of hope.” Such a statement might be taken as merely rhetorical or even eccentric if you hadn’t seen Bishop Tutu stare down the notorious South African Security Police when they broke into the Cathedral of St. George’s during his sermon at an ecumenical service. I was there and have preached about the dramatic story of his response more times than I can count. The incident taught me more about the power of hope than any other moment of my life. Desmond Tutu stopped preaching and just looked at the intruders as they lined the walls of his cathedral, wielding writing pads and tape recorders to record whatever he said and thereby threatening him with consequences for any bold prophetic utterances. They had already arrested Tutu and other church leaders just a few weeks before and kept them in jail for several days to make both a statement and a point: Religious leaders who take on leadership roles in the struggle against apartheid will be treated like any other opponents of the Pretoria regime. After meeting their eyes with his in a steely gaze, the church leader acknowledged their power (“You are powerful, very powerful”) but reminded them that he served a higher power greater than their political authority (“But I serve a God who cannot be mocked!”). Then, in the most extraordinary challenge to political tyranny I have ever witnessed, Archbishop Desmond Tutu told the representatives of South African apartheid, “Since you have already lost, I invite you today to come and join the winning side!” He said it with a smile on his face and enticing warmth in his invitation, but with a clarity and a boldness that took everyone’s breath away. The congregation’s response was electric. The crowd was literally transformed by the bishop’s challenge to power. From a cowering fear of the heavily armed security forces that surrounded the cathedral and greatly outnumbered the band of worshipers, we literally leaped to our feet, shouted the praises of God and began…dancing. (What is it about dancing that enacts and embodies the spirit of hope?) We danced out of the cathedral to meet the awaiting police and military forces of apartheid who hardly expected a confrontation with dancing worshippers. Not knowing what else to do, they backed up to provide the space for the people of faith to dance for freedom in the streets of South Africa.”

“You have turned my mourning into dancing…”  Thanks be to God!