We are a waiting people. We wait in life for fulfillment, even for many years. We wait for our children to be born. We also wait in our brokenness at times for restoration. There is gestation and birth in many ways, in both nature and in earth's cycles of the seasons. Creatures live and die, and we celebrate and mourn, often at the same time.
This conflict is seen both within and without, in both our conflicting emotions, and our conflicted relationships, lifelines, and years of service to entities we cannot control. Healing our wounds and our conflicts means waiting for redemption, for the meaning in the pain, and waiting for restoration, to be whole again.
One of the best things to do in waiting is to assume a posture of worship. This blog delineates some of the worshipful postures we have, including both dance and music. I spent years both dancing and teaching dance. I particularly found meaningful participating in the yearly 'March for Jesus' growing up which would start at the parliament buildings in Victoria.
I was part of a dance troupe that travelled to many churches, schools, and fairs, and went on YWAM as a teenager four times, even to Europe. The last team I was on was the Commonwealth Team that visited Victoria during the Commonwealth Games from Australia. I didn't stay with the team, as I was ill but stayed at home and travelled to the performances and sang a solo with them of "Let the Flame Burn Brighter". These trips taught me to keep the physical disciplines of dance and exercise in balance with spiritual disciplines. I saw the power of children singing and dancing to the Lord as a powerful tool to bring hope and renewal to many churches and even secular places like prisons, malls and walled countries.
Today as a Mennonite woman, I am reminded to keep things in balance with the spiritual realm. For example I read in the book The Celtic Way of Prayer by Esther de waal. She lead the way in relating the contemplative life to those living outside of monasteries. I now understand that we can couple menial tasks with prayer, particularly contemplative prayer. I appreciate the focus on building a good home, and a home that will last in the Mennonite tradition, with purposeful values. This physical house represents the spiritual house, and in this way each task takes on spiritual meaning.
Sometimes we are left in life with real scars and can be hurt again where we have been wounded before. I am trying to see the way through some painful times where people seem to re-open my scars, when I have already healed them. I don't see the point of reliving trauma, and often would discourage people from destabilizing too much through extensive counselling. Sometimes the practical rituals of daily life have to heal us through repetition and the sanctity of life itself.
Even in my life today, I am having to go back in time and unravel things that went wrong twenty years ago that were never resolved. Sweeping problems under the rug is certainly not the answer. I am worried at times that entire generations can have a festering wound, as we have seen recently in the news as the First Nations bands have come forward with disturbing evidence of their treatment in residential schools. Much more healing is needed to restore a whole people group. I made this video to describe the healing process, and the resolution.
Esther de Waal, one of Celtic Christianity's preeminent scholars, shows how this tradition of worship draws on both the pre-Christian past and on the fullness of the Gospel. It is also an enlightening glimpse at the history, folklore, and liturgy of the Celtic people.
Esther de Waal introduces readers to monastic prayer and praise (the foundation stone of Celtic Christianity), early Irish litanies, medieval Welsh praise poems, and the wealth of blessings derived from an oral tradition that made prayer a part of daily life. Through this invigorating book, readers enter a world in which ritual and rhythm, nature and seasons, images and symbols play an essential role. A welcome contrast to modern worship, Celtic prayer is liberating and, like a living spring, forever fresh. (Source: Amazon).
