Last week in out Online Ruby Way Dance Practice we explored the Dance of Confession
The word confess means to tell the truth with. For many of us the truth is that we have more beauty and courage than we are willing to own. The challenge is living fully in this.
Confessing who we are is a kind of claiming. Here is a dance that supports that.
- Begin with music or in silence.
- Take several deep breaths, offering this dance to God.
- Let your body take a shape. The shape doesn’t have to be expressive of anything in particular.
- Make another shape, then another.
- Move quickly from shape to shape and then slowly.Sense the transitions as well as the stopping places.
- Let the stillness in each shape fill with awareness.
- Allow yourself to be in whatever “shape you’re in”:tense, soft, big, little, demanding, pushy, pliant, weak.
- If you want, allow your body to move with more feeling, expressing what is in you.
- Bring the dance to a close with a gesture of reassurance or offering. You can give yourself a hug, or you could bow or surrender in a prostration. Give the truth of your body over to the love of God.
- Afterwards, take time to journal anything you notice. Especially if you don’t have the benefit of a witness, writing can complete the experience of telling the truth. Are there words for your sensations, feelings, or thoughts? What words of reassurance from God come to you,
When we hurt another person or group which is quite easy to do since we are quick to judge and too quick to act we may need to apologize. When an apology only worsens the situation we are called to live our amends. For this we need a blessed assurance.
I turned a tissue box into a shrine of assurance. Inside there is a black Madonna and lots of golden music notes. What does assurance look like to you?
Want to rent a shrine? I’ll send you a shrine with instructions. When you are done with it you can send it back. Need to keep it? That works too.
May 8th I’ll be in my studio from 6-9 celebrating beauty and my birthday. You are invited to Redux on that night.