The Arts

DANCE AS A SPIRITUAL PATH
by Rev. Susanna Weiss

Many of us associated with the Community of Peace and Spirituality have backgrounds in the arts. Mine was as a professional dancer for seventeen years. As I have followed the path to service, I realized that while I had never thought of it in these terms, dance had been my spiritual path, my way of connecting to the divine. Indeed, it had even been a type of “ministry,” bringing forth an emotionally moving experience for audiences.

While I long ago left the professional world of dance, except for an occasional guest artist appearance, I still often return to that mode of experiencing the sacred. In my personal worship practices, I still find that if a piece of music stirs my soul, movement is the best way for me to express it. Dance becomes a silent prayer, sometimes joyful, sometimes overwhelmed with sadness. The physical ache that I feel when my heart hurts at the suffering of another being seems to call for a physical expression. The exultation that courses through my body when I am touched by the joys of love, life, and spirit can, for me, be truly expressed through movement. I dance, and it becomes a prayer.

In recent years I have also created dances and performed them as sacred statements. My desire is to communicate the essence of a basic human emotion to the congregation, something that we all share and feel in common. By “speaking” our mutual feelings in a dance, I hope that we can all use that journey of movement to touch the very center of divinity. It is a path that bypasses thinking, logic, and words, one that springs from what is simultaneously human and divine inside each one of us. It embodies the essence of a feeling, a way to describe something unknowable and ultimately inexpressible. The eternal mysteries seem to transcend words and explanations. The arts are a wonderful way of embracing and celebrating those mysteries. I know that I can become closer to the divine in sublime moments of artistic experiences.

There will be opportunities throughout the year at the Community to deepen our spiritual experiences through dance. I invite all of us to join in the path of movement and dance as a gesture of embracing the divinity that surrounds us and abides within.