Last week-end I flew down to a tiny town in the foothills of the Australian Alps called Mitta Mitta. A dance friend who was a member of Sacred Dance Ministries International, Jan Sabastian, was being ordained into the Uniting Church (combination of Presbyterian, Methodist and Congregational). She is stationed in Melbourne the second largest city in Australia, but was brought up in Mitta Mitta where everyone knows everyone. So the whole town turned out for the ordination which was in the community hall, the one church there not being big enough. I joined with two other friends who are dancers and we finished putting together a choreography to "For the Beauty of the Earth" by John Rutter which we danced near the beginning of the service. It was a joy and privilege and Jan was really pleased. We got some honest feed-back from a few locals (see photo below) such as "I can't say that sort of dancing does much for me" but most people seemed to really appreciate it. Jan looked radiant and used her dance ministry background in responding with several worship movements throughout the ceremony. People had come from all over the country to be there.
Arriving back Sunday night gave me just a short time to recover and get ready for Monday evening when I was to speak and lead a workshop for CDFA (Dance Fellowship) members in Sydney to celebrate Pentecost and International Christian Dance Week. It is great to have our "own" centre now - a Uniting Church that's been turned into a Creative Arts Centre in an inner city suburb.
We talked about the 2 leavened loaves that with two lambs that were waved before the Lord for Shavuot (Pentecost) - one of the three pilgrim feast instigated by God and used in temple days. On the first day of the week after Passover and Unleavened bread, the sheaf of the first standing grain that was waved before the Lord and had prophetically symbolised the resurrection. Now, for Shavuot, 2 loaves of leavened bread are waved on the day when the Holy Spirit was given to the church and 3,000 were added to the believers. Yeast is spoken of in the Bible as something which is a picture of the Kingdom of God growing (Matt 13:33) but also as a picture of sin that spreads (1 Cor 5:6). The Holy Spirit does both, bringing an awareness and conviction of sin that leads to repentance and also grows the Kingdom as people are drawn to faith in Christ through the Spirit's work. The two loaves show that there is still division in the church and between Jew and Gentile as we are not yet without sin.
Another feature of Shavuot is that the Book of Ruth is always read in the synagogues. It is such a beautiful love story. I was first made aware of it by my English teacher at high school where we read it as a piece of literature as it is so well written. The short book tells the story of Ruth as a Moabite woman joining herself to her widowed mother-in-law, Naomi ,who was returning to her home in Bethlehem. Ruth provided for them by gleaning in the fields made possible by God's command for Shavuot that the edges of the field should be left for the poor, widows and aliens to glean. Through this she met the owner of field, Boaz, and eventually married him becoming an ancestor of Jesus.
The main focus of Shavuot for Jews is celebrating the giving of the law on Mt Sinai, their covenant (marriage) with God and the birth of the Jewish nation. Christians celebrate the birth of the Church and the giving of the new covenant.
At the workshop we then prayed and moved through the idea of the seed that grows into a plant that can bear much fruit and ended our time with a CaraMayan movement meditation to the words of Psalm 67 as a prayer and blessing for the nations. I had adapted movements that were composed by a group of caucasian and Australian aboriginal people at a Dance Fellowship conference held during the Feast of Tabernacles in the centre of Australia. We wanted to send out a blessing to the whole nation which mostly lives on the edges of the continent. I am hoping this moving out of Psalm 67 will spread and be used around the world during future International Christian Dance Weeks to bless and pray for the nations. Pentecost is also the day chosen by the Global Day of Prayer to pray for the spread of the Kingdom around the world.
At the workshop we then prayed and moved through the idea of the seed that grows into a plant that can bear much fruit and ended our time with a CaraMayan movement meditation to the words of Psalm 67 as a prayer and blessing for the nations. I had adapted movements that were composed by a group of caucasian and Australian aboriginal people at a Dance Fellowship conference held during the Feast of Tabernacles in the centre of Australia. We wanted to send out a blessing to the whole nation which mostly lives on the edges of the continent. I am hoping this moving out of Psalm 67 will spread and be used around the world during future International Christian Dance Weeks to bless and pray for the nations. Pentecost is also the day chosen by the Global Day of Prayer to pray for the spread of the Kingdom around the world.
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