SEXUALITY AND SPIRITUALITY: INVITATION TO THE DANCE
By Ben Roe -- Summer, 1980
In dancing I feel alive, my body-self celebrating the uniqueness that is me. In dancing and in experiencing music in other ways, the weakest part of my body feels most alive--there is no temptation to overburden it, but to flow and explore movement and rhythm. In dancing where there is inclusiveness of a range of orientations and lifestyles, as in worshipping in an inclusive and sensitive liturgy, I feel "together," most integrated as a body-self. In dancing I celebrate a sense of wholeness.
In dancing I experience relationship with others: the one(s) with whom I'm dancing as well as the others who are dancing. Sometimes we're dancing in similar ways, sometimes in very different ways, but we're still dancing to the same music.
In dancing with a special friend I share a sense of companionship, a shared sense of activity, celebration of pleasure, of sensual experience.
Finally, dancing is an act of compassion to the degree that it is expressing a concern for a shared partnership in doing acts of justice and reconciliation, as well as celebrating growth and the overcoming of pain.
Sexuality as "a sign, a symbol, and a means of our call to communication and communion" is, in a way very real to me, an invitation to the dance: the dance of life, of wholeness, of relationship, of companionship and of compassion.
I haven't always felt free to dance. It's hard to dance when you're growing up with braces and casts on your legs; it's hard to dance in a sickbed; and, most importantly, it's hard to dance when you learn (sometimes by instruction) that you can't trust your body.
I haven't always felt free to dance. Religion taught both that our bodies were good, that Christ was God-in-bodiness, and that we couldn't trust the impulses of the flesh (translate: body). The latter was the stronger message but the former was a slim ray of hope to my conflicted, confused, often hurting and helpless being.
I haven't always felt free to dance. A man was supposed to be in control, to know exactly what dance steps were done to what music, to be the one to ask another to dance. If I couldn't trust my body to be able to move coordinatedly and gracefully and quickly, then I couldn't risk initiating dancing, especially if dancing meant that one wanted to get married! (After all, touching inevitably leads to...)
I haven't always felt free to dance. A minister shouldn't dance in public...
I haven't always felt free to dance. A man can't be good and be Christian if he loves a woman and enjoys the intimate friendship of another woman. A man can't even be a man or be real if he also is attracted to and enjoys the intimate friendship of other men. For a long time I hid my awareness of my enjoyment of other males because that meant I was...bad. I'm making progress, but tradition is strong: one must be either/or, not both/and in dancing. One shouldn't dance with more than one other at a time.
In dancing I celebrate my journey of growth in wholeness, in self-knowledge, self-acceptance, and courage to be me in relationship, companionship, and compassion.
In dancing I celebrate a God who has been faithfully present through my journeys. I celebrate God, who has offered me acceptance and wholeness through my wonderings, my panic and terror, my depths of loving and heights of vulnerability and joy, all intimately a part of my experience and growth in my sexuality.
In dancing I celebrate the communal nature of existence, the eye-to-eye, shoulder-to-shoulder, hip-to-hip experience of sexuality, the commonness of our human journeys, the dreams of a new community.
In dancing I celebrate the passion and love of a God who celebrates the goodness, the growth, the compassion, the joy that is me, that is us.
Let us dance together!
(written for Jim Nelson's class, "Sexual Theology," summer, 1980, Iliff School of Theology, Denver)