Dancing: Turning Spirit into Flesh
Chickens dance, people dance, and trees dance. Colors dance, too. So do sounds. Rocks dance as well. Wherever there is a movement there is a kind of dancing. A smile, a frown, a wink, a movement of the body during sleep: all is dancing. Often, in human life, dance emerges through struggle and pain. Grief is a form of dancing, as is turning grief into beauty. This transformation of grief into beauty is what process theologians call creative transformation, or, in the words of Monica Coleman, "making a way of no way." Creative transformation is one way, and not the only way, of turning flesh into spirit and spirit into flesh. You might call it materialized or embodied spirituality. One key to life to dance in whatever ways are possible, by whatever means, for the well-being of life, your own included. Theology at its best is much more than a description of how things were, or how things are, or even how things can be. It offers guidelines for turning spirit into flesh. It is a dancing lesson. "Farewell Amor," as reviewed by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat below, presents a series of very important steps in that lesson.
Jay McDaniel, Feb. 5, 2021