Cure-ations: Listen to the Dancers
Listen to the Dancers
A curator gathers and tracks gold in people, images, words, dances and stories. The hunt requires one to subscribe, open, and delete scads of unwanted news. For me, curating and sharing is a way of feeding sunlight to the soul. In the digital age information can cure or curse us. I hope this cure-ation is a blessing. It could be used on a retreat or over several days of meditation.
Love, Cynthia
Why Dance Our Prayers
Our life force is connected to everything. The ancients knew and still practice the fastest way to co-ignite the power of Earth, Humanity, and the Divine. Move body to body, cell to cell, and energy system to the energy system. Rhythm is key.
Dances create and enact power, soul power. Those who dedicate generative movements with a sacred intention are not only praying. Their dances are formidable forms of social action and the opposite of war.
Dance regenerates humanity in the web of life when when our humanity feels at risk.
In the coming days and months, look for ways to dance on behalf of the sacred hopes and intentions for our species. As Deena Metzger reminds us in A Stubborn and Luminous Mystery: The Spiritual Lives of Animals many other species are ahead of us.
There will be many ways to engage. Witness dance, receive the dance of others, and honor dancers. All of this upholds the prayer. I learned this from indigenous people around the world.
The Dance of Life is literally everywhere if we look. Words dance, eyes dance, and hearts dance. Put intention in anything, and then dance it. Let me know what you notice. When you come across something that sings of the dance of life, will you send it for a future cure-ation?
Straight away, I’m so pleased to support
11 days to Dance on Behalf of Peace, Feb 18-29 @ 5-5:30 pm PST. Register to get updates, a global prayer initiated by InterPlay innovators Marla Durden and Christine Gautreaux. Any or all of 11 days, you’ll warm up, be inspired by peace partners, and dance on behalf of the peace so needed in the world.
Also from Marla- Get “The Magical You Playbook & Embodied Self Care Journal” by Marla Durden, Marla is supported by the Spirit Web of Elementals, Fairies, Creatives, Angels and Guides. She just compiled and published her playbook of practices, activities, journal prompts, affirmation coloring pages, and more to help us rediscover and claim our true selves. Get and gift the book. It is designed to inspire us to find and live from the magic within.
Dance Your Ritual
“A Minyan of Trees” from A Way In Jewish Mindfulness Rabbi Yael Levy. says kaddish for a beloved uncle by davening with trees. She counted ten trees, making a minyan as she entered into prayer. Read her poem of thanks for the gifts of the trees.
An ancient practice that reflects a deep understanding of the human psyche and spirit, from Rabbi Sharon Brous's “The Amen Effect.” Buried deep within the Mishnah, a Jewish legal compendium from around the third century, is an ancient practice reflecting a deep understanding of the human psyche and spirit: When your heart is broken, when the specter of death visits your family, when you feel lost and alone and inclined to retreat, you show up. You entrust your pain to the community.
The text, Middot 2:2, describes a pilgrimage ritual from the time of the Second Temple. Several times each year, hundreds of thousands of Jews would ascend to Jerusalem, the center of Jewish religious and political life. They would climb the steps of the Temple Mount and enter its enormous plaza, turning to the right en masse, circling counterclockwise.
Meanwhile, the brokenhearted, the mourners (and here I would also include the lonely and the sick), would make this same ritual walk but they would turn to the left and circle in the opposite direction: every step against the current.
And each person who encountered someone in pain would look into that person’s eyes and inquire: “What happened to you? Why does your heart ache?”
◦ “My father died,” a person might say. “There are so many things I never got to say to him.” Or perhaps: “My partner left. I was completely blindsided.” Or: “My child is sick. We’re awaiting the test results.”Those who walked from the right would offer a blessing: “May the Holy One comfort you,” they would say. “You are not alone.” And then they would continue to walk until the next person approached.
This timeless wisdom speaks to what it means to be human in a world of pain. This year, you walk the path of the anguished. Perhaps next year, it will be me. I hold your broken heart knowing that one day you will hold mine.
Recall a past self through dance and poetry. A short film meditating on ceremonial movement practiced by a community in Shanghai. Jiayi Fan returns to her hometown to discover what dance truly means to her. The boundaries between the stage and life blur as she tries to reach her past self through dance and understand the events that transpired in her hometown... Read more at https://www.nowness.asia/picks/moveme...
“Radical Resilience and the Dance of Hope” Steven Charleston shares the message of Paiute prophet Wovoka (c. 1856–1932), who received a spiritual vision of the earth’s renewal, with equality and reconciliation for all people. Wovoka taught the Ghost Dance as a way of embodying the hope of this heavenly vision during a time of crisis.
Dance as Wisdom
“To Dance Is a Radical Act,” Psychology Today. Kimerer L. LaMothe, Ph.D. author of What a Body Knows, recalls the practice of dancing as vital to our survival as humans on Earth.
Dancing with Systems: The Donella Meadows Dances with Systems Change– The Dance
1. Get the beat.
2. Listen to the wisdom of the system.
3. Expose your mental models to the open air.
4. Stay humble. Stay a learner.
5. Honor and protect information.
6. Locate responsibility in the system.
7. Make feedback policies for feedback systems.
8. Pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable.
9. Go for the good of the whole.
10. Expand time horizons.
11. Expand thought horizons.
12. Expand the boundary of caring.
13. Celebrate complexity.
14. Hold fast to the goal of goodness.
Dance in Visual Art
Arpita Gaidhane Illumines the Moment with art ceremonies that delve deep into a person’s process, culminating in a painting to celebrate the moment. Her curated experiences allow you to explore your story with thought-provoking conversation and a secular ceremony. Based on the time together, she will paint you a personalized work of art to take home. Gift this special experience to yourself or a loved one. Arpita is a graduate of InterPlay’s Art and Social Change Program and continues to follow the wisdom of her body and soul.
Wendy on Substack supports kids and adults to draw. When she found “Dance” by Bill T Jones and Susan Kuklin she got so excited.
Poets That Dance Us
From The Natyashastra
Where the hand moves, the gaze follows
Where the gaze moves, the heart follows
Where the heart goes, the emotion follows
Where the emotion manifests, there is rasa.
“The Natyashastra is in part theatrical manual, part philosophy of aesthetics, part mythological history, part theology".[8] It is the oldest surviving encyclopedic treatise on dramaturgy from India, with sections on the theory and practice of various performance arts. Performance arts, states Natyashastra, are a form of Vedic ritual ceremony (yajna).[51][52]”
THIS IMPERFECT DANCE
We never rehearsed this
We are a mess
We tremble and perspire
We step on each other’s toes
Sometimes we go out of tune
And forget our lines
But at least this is real
At least we are not half-alive
Buried under the weight of some image
We never believed in anyway
I will always take this imperfect dance
Over no dance at all
– Jeff Foster
If you had a temple in the secret spaces of your heart,
What would you worship there?
What would you bring to sacrifice?
What would be behind the curtain in the holy of holies?Go there now.
~ Tom Barrett ~
And the people stayed home.
And read books,
and listened,
and rested,
and exercised,
and made art,
and played games,
and learned new ways of being,
and were still.
And listened more deeply.
Some meditated,
some prayed,
some danced.
Some met their shadows.
And the people began to think differently.
And the people healed.
And, in the absence of people living in ignorant,
dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways,
the earth began to heal.
And when the danger passed,
and the people joined together again,
they grieved their losses,
and made new choices,
and dreamed new images,
and created new ways to live
and heal the earth fully,
as they had been healed.
~Kitty O’Meara’~
“they grieved their losses, / and made new choices, / and dreamed new images, / and created new ways to live”
I’m holding onto this as a picture of what’s possible.