From an announcement on the website for Xavier University’s Bellarmine Chapel:
“Sweep out the chambers of your heart! Make it ready to be the dwelling of the Beloved”. Please join us for an evening of Dances of Universal Peace on Fridays, Feb 22, Mar 1, Mar 15 at 7:00 in the narthex. We will do some simple walking meditations, and some very simple circle dances from our Christian tradition. This is a wonderful way to add a Lenten practice which is comforting and joyful to your life. If you can walk, you can do these dances! For more information, contact …
In reality, both the lead quote and “Dances of Universal Peace” come from adherents of Sufism, a mystical form of Islam. What this has to do with Lent is unclear. Ditto for why it’s being performed in the narthex for an at least nominally Catholic church.
18 February 2013 at 4:37 pm
Good question. Maybe it is the same trunk with the magic glasses some folks used.
18 February 2013 at 7:59 pm
“If you can walk, you can do these dances!”
That’s not exactly what I’d call a selling point.
18 February 2013 at 8:33 pm
??? As someone with a medieval history minor and an abiding interest in church history, I can’t imagine what they are talking about. Carols were circle dances with songs… could that be it?
18 February 2013 at 8:48 pm
Again, it’s a Sufi practice, not a Christian one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufi_whirling
21 February 2013 at 9:28 am
I asked because the announcement said the dances would be from the “Christian tradition.” Turns out it means Christian “tradition” since the 1960s — dances developed in Christian settings as part of this:
http://www.dancesofuniversalpeacena.org/
originally promulgated by a gentleman in his 70s, who was supposedly both a Sufi mystic and a Zen Master. One of those Eastern gurus who gets famous in the West for doing something he dreams up and markets as Eastern wisdom.
18 February 2013 at 8:53 pm
This is no doubt a part of “Christian tradition” that isn’t Christian.
18 February 2013 at 9:33 pm
There are Easter carol-dances and Christmas carol-dances, and there are carols for holidays that usually broke up Lent (like Annunciation carols). There are the Spanish boys who do a sword dance at Vespers on a certain holiday. There are also a good many Christian prayer practices which involve going to some shrine or holy spot and walking (or creeping on one’s knees) in circles around it while praying. There is even the feast of St. Willibrord in Luxembourg, to which the pious parade as pilgrims in an odd dancing gait.
But there aren’t any Lenten carols or Lenten prayer dances that I’ve ever heard of, and it’s stupid for a university to promote ahistoric practices as somehow traditional.
18 February 2013 at 9:37 pm
If they want something traditional and representative of the local Cincinnati Catholic heritage, they should (a) do the Rosary up those steps and (b) promulgate respect for the German/Swiss custom of the Lenten Fasting Fairy, who would strike down anybody who broke the Friday fast without good reason or worked on a holy day. Because Germans just love punitive magical critters.
Egg trees made out of pussywillow or similar plants really are traditional German stuff, though. It’s connected to the German well-dressing customs, which are more of an Easter thing there than in England, Ireland, etc.
18 February 2013 at 9:47 pm
We also could have built a hut or a straw man (representing the “old man” of sin) on the first Sunday of Lent and burned it. Of course, the media celebrates this Sunday every day of the year, because they love burning straw men.
20 February 2013 at 4:52 pm
We can burn that straw man down by the Ohio River, in the parking lot behind Saint Rose! Sounds like fun! Let me know.
18 February 2013 at 11:29 pm
ritual dance, you mean like these dizzy bats, sorry nuns, from my old blog
http://germanegyptian.blogspot.com/2009/07/hell-bound-in-polyester.html
Hell Bound in Polyester
did a search for the Green Mountain Monastery, what a bunch of polyester nightmares, No wonder these gals are afraid of an apostolic inquiry, they do not act like Nuns or Sisters and their ideas are certainly not Catholic
click on link to see picture
they call this the “Ritual Dance around the coffin at liturgy” just click on the Thomas Berry funeral tab and get an eye full
Their idea of a proper funeral for their founder Fr Thomas Berry. In their goodness they never refer to him as Fr. How wonderfully informal
19 February 2013 at 9:04 pm
Yep. “Sweep out the chambers of your heart” is from Mahmud Shabistari. There is nothing remotely Christian about it. Xavier’s abode in the void continues.
20 February 2013 at 3:46 pm
I do a circle-dance during Mass if I need to use the facilities but can’t get there at the moment. Is that what we’re talking about?
21 February 2013 at 9:32 am
Wow, I’ve done that dance too. Let’s do a workshop on it.