Clearly Spirit, Great Mystery, the Creator is in all things, guiding us in understanding our individual and collective journeys. As a community of dancers in search of healing and renewal, we seek to learn how we can deepen our sense of the sacred through meaningful prayer.
The definitions many of us learned while growing up about Faith, Prayer, and Action may no longer serve our current conditions, so perhaps the time is ripe to start anew. We encourage your mind and heart to open to new possibilities, to explore new ways of looking at how we can bridge the divide between the seen and the unseen.
There’s good reason why Spirit is often called Great Mystery. As humans, as two-leggeds walking this earth, we quickly learn that our human reasoning is not enough to exist on this planet. It becomes our responsibility to find what works and doesn’t work on this earth, and to find ways to integrate Spirit into our lives. How do we find balance between heaven and earth?
Sadly most of what we’ve learned about faith over the years may be faulty, wrong, dangerous, or even self-serving hooey. We’ve been burned so often we’ve lost faith in faith!
Faith requires a sense of trust in something that may be unknowable or elusive to our rational way of human thinking. Sometimes our first tentative steps can begin by allowing the heart to roam new terrain more freely. The biggest and best investment we can ever make is to begin building our trust in Spirit; no small task.
While we ourselves may be trekking into unseen worlds for the first time, the path is well trodden by thousands and millions before us. Our beliefs in what we think is real may be challenged, stretched, and tested. We must relearn confidence in our own intuition and our deep understanding of what is right and true for us.
Prayer is our means of communication with Spirit. We need to recognize that a dialogue is going on if only we have the ears to hear, the inner sight to see, the courage to speak and the wisdom to act. Many dancers, their families and friends have discovered that prayer works, even if they don’t understand why it works.
There are big prayers, little prayers, private prayers, shared prayers: all shapes and sizes. The most powerful are those heartfelt prayers with intent and purpose behind them. It is an invitation to Great Mystery to step in and assist. Prayers are a striving to become whole again amidst the stresses and struggles of daily life.
The strongest of prayers emanate from the deep recesses of one’s heart. Prayers permit unexpected responses, perhaps in ways you least imagine. It takes courage, patience, gratitude, and a sense of humor to invite Great Mystery into one’s life. As the Elders say, “be careful what you pray for, you just might get it!”
As human beings one of our most sacred duties on this earth is right action in balance and harmony with our prayers and the guidance we may receive from our ancestors and Great Mystery. It’s time to walk the talk.
Right action can come only after we have sat with our prayers, listened to guidance, and reached a state of clarity. Faith shouldn’t drive any of your actions until you find clarity. Faith without clarity is just ideology, the Crusades all over again. There is no benefit or wisdom by acting on blind faith.
We can recognize our responsibility not only to ourselves and Spirit, but also to the various families and communities to whom we are connected. Each Dance community goes through many growing pains as it finds healthy and sustainable ways to be in relation with others.
By deepening our understanding of prayer we recognize the interrelatedness it has with our faith and how we act in the world. We look to our Medicine Bundles, to our ancestors, to our guides, to Creator in an effort to continue the deepening for balance and harmony on Mother Earth, for all our relations.
