Hello...

Lunchtime, and I'm alone in the office, keeping an eye on the front desk while some departmental meeting or other goes on. I work IN the department, but I'm not OF it, so that means I get to miss departmental meetings. Yay.

I haven't been posting...I haven't had many urges to post, and those that I have are soft and weak and usually crumble by the time I log on. But I've gotten several kind and concerned e-mails, and I "miss" all of the interaction of the Quaker blogging circle, though I'm still faithfully reading my ever-growing list.I have yet to do the blog-rolling thing, which would make it all a little more streamlined. Either I am lazy, or I kind of enjoy the moment of suspense when I click a link...will there be a new post, or won't there?

My struggles with depression have lightened somewhat, with a little help from Big Pharma. It's an industry I loathe almost as much as Big Oil, but there are some compromises you have to make, and a Christian Scientist I am not, even if I find Mrs. Eddy's tomb a peaceful spot for reflection. It is not perfect, and I still feel a bit weighed down at times, but the debilitating, crushing feelings have become much more rare, and that is a huge blessing.

Spiritually, things are quiet. Meeting has been difficult lately...the usual war between the sacred and the profane, and the profane is winning. Remarkably, I've been unable to get worked up about this. Normally I could participate in any number of overwrought conversations and posts about the struggle, but lately I just feel quieter about it, with a strengthening of my feeling that I must become as tender to members of the meeting as I can.

I've started studying ballet, the long-belated continuation of a dream that was put on hold by family circumstances a long, long time ago. It turns out there is a very good school a block from my work, and they have a generous work-study program, so I can take class for free, in return for a once-a-week shift. Once upon a time, I was fixated on ballet with the same sense of religious fanaticism that I brought to church. Idolatry? Certainly. But maybe more.

I'm afraid of tumbling into cliches, but I'm noticing the thousands of parallels between ballet and religious practice. Moreover, I'm learning a lot about the way I relate to the world, and especially to the spiritual world, by observing the way I am reacting to ballet. The metaphors of religion have often been used to describe ballet, and it's a familiar dichotomy, so I was somewhat aware of this going in. However, I have been surprised to see how personally these parallels have come into play for me.

There's a part of me that wonders if my embracing ballet is a bit of a substitute for the sense of sacredness that I am missing in meeting. Coincidentally, my ballet studio is housed in an old church...a huge, famous stained glass window makes up most of the back wall of our studio. But even the plainest serious ballet studio has obvious similarities to a sacred or holy place. You take off your shoes before you go in. There are vestments and habits...clothes reserved for this one activity. There are earnest acolytes. There are Masters. There are rules, and rituals, and routines. Dedication, discipline, perseverence, humility, fortitude...so many classical virtues are required to advance along the path. The perfection of a classically trained professional dancer seems as unattainable and desirable to a wobbly beginner as the perfection of a great saint and mystic seems to a humble sinner. There is no question about it. Ballet is High Church.

And in my passionate, bumbling love for it, I am learning a lot about my relation to Church and Sacredness.

If you asked a ballet dancer if the list above "was" ballet, they'd say, I am sure, "no." They would talk about how it was so much more...about the transcendence of movement, of becoming one with the music, of speaking the unspeakable through gesture. But if you asked them next, "if you took away the list of rules, etc, and left behind just the becoming one with the music, transcendence part, would it still be ballet?" I think the answer would also be "no." It might be dance, but it wouldn't be ballet.

And so I sit and stretch and think, do I love dance? Or do I love the legalistic formality of ballet? Or something else?

I don't know, exactly. It is this part of the metaphor that starts to get very uncomfortable for me. It requires more reflection. Many dancers will speak of the relief they feel in coming into the studio, a place that is literally sacred--"set apart" for one this thing of beauty and effort, where all the petty problems of "outside" melt away. And yet the same dancers will tell you how much they bring out of the studio, back to the world, when class is over.

There is no reason that sacredness need come only from forms. I believe this. But I've been in a "free movement" class where everyone was there for a different reason, and doing a different thing, with different levels of dedication, and it didn't have the same feeling of sacredness that a formal ballet class has for me.

Which has me examining how much I am relying on outside things/people for my sense of "sacred space". I can't seem to find the words for it, but what Liz wrote certainly has something to do with it. As I said, there is much more reflection to do.

But in a more micro-sense, I find it's not only my attitudes and thoughts about religion that are mirrored in ballet class, but also my experience in striving for faithfulness. As always, the spirit is willing...sometimes achingly willing, but the body remains pitifully weak. There are so many things to keep track of at once. Eyes front, chest up, shoulders down, knees stretched, hips turned out, elbows up, wrists down, heels forward, toes pointed, thighs pulled up, ribcage held under, stomach in, tail bone down, foot rotated...and every time you fix one thing, the next one breaks.

How many days do I start out with a similar list? Be kind. Be strong. Open your mind. Guard your lips. Follow the Spirit's leading. Don't outrun the Spirit. Don't say No to God. Don't say Yes to your self. Ego in. Heart out. Be humble. Be gentle with yourself. Don't let yourself get away with anything. React with wisdom. React with tenderness. Be discerning. Be open. Keep your brain quiet. Proclaim the Good News...

And yet in both cases, the minute you begin to strain to do all these impossible things at once, it all becomes twice as hard. And as soon as you can let go a bit, things begin to fall into place.

When I'm struggling to get a pliè right, I think, why do I want this perfect? Am I doing this for its own sake, to seek perfection and faithfulness in this one movement? Am I doing it because I want to be noticed by the teacher? Am I doing it because I feel insecure next to the girl in front of me, who does it better? Am I remembering that mastering this movement will lead me on to hundreds more, which all build on the perfection of this one "simple" bending of the knees?

When we move across the floor, and I've pictured the motion a thousand times a thousand times, but halfway through I turn the wrong way, why do I stop with shame and waste time berating myself? What am I getting out of a little performance of apologizing? Does it really help the class, or my improvement as a dancer?

And stretching...a good old Quaker metaphor. You lean just a little farther, lift just a little higher, and it hurts, but bearably, and it makes such a difference in everything else.

As I sweated and trembled through class last night, full of mixed feelings and deep concentration, these were some of the things that were dancing in the back of my mind.