Dancing in the Margins

Anyone who has had any management or life coaching will tell you the importance of “building margin” into your life – down time, times of rest and reflection. Like a page filled to the edges with no margin, a life with no margin is illegible. But what if the page is all gone and you are forced to write ONLY in the margins? 

In April, most of my colleagues and I were “strategically withdrawn” from our country of service due to unrest. The immediate effects of this were described in several blog posts entitled “thoughts from the pressure cooker”.

In the meantime, I have become a nomad and it looks like that is unlikely to change before year-end, by which time I will have made 14 border crossings going back and forth between 6 different countries, averaging just 3 weeks per country. 

Our group has adapted to having at least half of our people working remotely. In fact, I can’t think of anyone who is not separated from at least some of his “direct reports.”

The logistics of managing money and houses and cars and salaries at a distance is quite complicated.  The extra travel and rent were not budgeted. Some of us have taken up new assignments in other countries or their home countries, which leaves serious personnel holes.

In addition to ongoing uncertainty about the security situation and the very real possibility of war, the local economy has made things difficult for most of general population. 

Whereas it is fairly normal in our work to have  crises arrive that take energy and time, we normally seem to be able to come up with a work around. However, so many thing have come to a head since the crisis that it seems we do nothing but shuffle things around with no room to maneuver. 

The other day I was in a meeting and something came up and I said offhandedly, “It’s like we are always dancing in the margins”. 

This image really seemed to resonate and I mulled it over for a few days and worked it into my main director’s report to our group. 

Life is a Dance

Life is a dance, that we do for the glory of God. We all dance, according to our gifts, background and culture, each one bringing something different to the mix. Our dancing should attract others to the dance, so that there is someone from each tongue and tribe and nation dancing with us in the “Great Dance” described so nicely by CS Lewis in Perelandra.

  

 Sometimes life will send an obstacle our way, opening up a hole in the dance floor.  But if you know it’s there, you can dance around it.  Even if there are TWO holes, you can keep dancing, with some modifications.

But occasionally, your world turns upside down and a sinkhole opens up in your living room, relegating you to dancing in the margins.

So what is our response to being forced into the margin?

Can we ignore the sinkhole and just imagine it does not exist? Not really, without some serious psychological consequences down the road. 

Can we continue to dance? Do we have to, or can we just give up? This is a valid question and the answer depends a lot on your individual and family needs, and your calling. In our context, it is obvious that our group needs to keep working as long as it is day, “Because night is coming, when no one can work." (John 9:4-5) 

  

Okay, so if you we decide that we are called to continue to work “in the margins”, how do we go about that? 

• Meet Jesus in the Margins.  He who so frequently sought out the marginal meets us there, too. As I mulled over this, I imagined our Good Shepherd preparing us a table right there in the margins, next to our gaping sinkhole. If he can do it in the presences of our enemies, why not? And he provides not just sustenance but a joyful banquet.
• Don’t just soldier on in your own human strength. Realize, like God does, that we are "but dust". HE is the one who rescues us from the pit, renews my strength like the Eagle’s and fills my life with good things! (Psalm 103)
• Share in the death of Jesus so that HIS life is shared with us!  

2 Corinthians 4-8-10 We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies.”

I am not sure how this works. I can certainly relate to the “pressed on every side, perplexed, knocked down. . .” but it seems that these painful things are accompanied with this promise of Jesus sharing his life with us, through us. 

• Do what you can to change the internal factors, realizing you cannot do anything about the external factors. You may not be able to fill in the sinkhole, but you can clear out the furniture that is blocking the rest of the floor.P
• Pray for God to bring justice and cause rivers to flow in the desert. Isaiah 35.

 Keep Dancing with Jesus in the margins!

Let's Dance! (A Psalm of David ....Bowie??)

Over the past 2 weeks I have driven 24 hours, spread out over 5 days. That's a lot of time in the car and I have been listening to sermon podcasts but also a lot of music piped over the speakers from my phone.

Part of Sabbatical for me has been just being open for God to speak in unexpected ways, ears to the ground, eyes open in wonder. Eugene Peterson talks about cultivating wonder: "surprise, puzzlement, astonishment - GOD at work. and right here - in Jesus, in you, in me!" I would add: noticing God's creative image in those around me, joy at being alive, wonder at God's love lavished on me. . .

So anyway, I am driving along somewhere between Austin and the brown nothingness of Midland that makes the desert in Gao, Mali, look like a garden paradise, and I come across the David Bowie 80's classic "Let's Dance." I actually had this as my ringtone fairly recently because it just has such an awesome groove.

But the more I listened, I began to hear it as a song, a psalm perhaps, with God singing in joy and love over us and inviting us to join in. Wonder, in odd places. I doubt that is how David Bowie intended it so with apologies to him:

Let's Dance
Let's dance put on your red shoes and dance the blues

 Like most psalms, we start out with "the blues" - hard times. But there is intentionality to find joy (red shoes) and dance in spite of the blues.

Let's dance to the song
they're playin' on the radio

 God meets us where we are - with the song that is already playing on the radio.

Let's sway
while color lights up your face
Let's sway
sway through the crowd to an empty space

God invites us away to an empty space, alone with Him.

(Our response to God in submission and trust:)

If you say run, I'll run with you
If you say hide, we'll hide

 (God's declaration of overflowing love for us):

Because my love for you
Would break my heart in two
If you should fall
Into my arms
And tremble like a flower

This last bit reminds me of Rich Mullin's line "Hold me, Jesus, cause I'm shaking like a leaf".

Let's dance for fear
your grace should fall
Let's dance for fear tonight is all ...

Let's dance put on your red shoes
and dance the blues

Let's dance to the song
they're playin' on the radio

Let's dance, Let's dance, Let's DANCE!

--------------------------
Okay, sorry to anyone for whom I have ruined this most excellent song. I had doubts about posting this at all, but then last night I was reading the reading on Sacred Space devotional online and found this reflection of Jesus coming alongside us, as he did on the Emmaus road with downcast disciples:

Yet all at once there is someone, a seeming stranger, alongside … and what a change then takes place! And can it be the same with me, as I travel on my way, downcast and lifeless? Someone always alongside, who never gives up on me? Perhaps even he is my partner on what might be called ‘my dancing day’ – for, crazy as it may sound, he seems to dance, dance before me, so I find myself alive once more, and with vibrant movement coming back into my limbs. ‘He dances so that you may dance. He shows you what beauty is, his body awakens yours. He’s there to be your partner and everyone’s; sometimes you’ll see him opposite you, sometimes not … He gives you the fusion of his mind and imagination and flesh – his glorious body’ (Rowan Williams, Open to Judgement, p. 74).

 And then there is this verse, which is slightly more Baptist because God is just singing over us, not dancing :-)

Zephaniah 3:17 For the Lord your God is living among you.
He is a mighty savior.
He will take delight in you with gladness.
With his love, he will calm all your fears.
He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.”

Unplugged wells: Everybody Dance Now

Since God began working in my life last last spring, there have been two big metaphors he has used:

1. Coming back from exile
2. Refreshing Water of Life

Some of the water verses I have gotten into are:

Ps. 119:25 - I lie in the dust, completely discouraged; revive me by your word. (The water metaphor is implied)

Jeremiah 2:13 "For my people have done two evil things: they have forsaken me - the fountain of living water. And they have dug for themselves cracked cisterns that can hold no water at all." (Turning your back on the joy and life that God provides and looking for it in alternative places).

John 7:37-38 "If you are thirsty, come to me! If you believe in me, come and drink! for the Scriptures declare that rivers of living water will flow out from within.

Fast forward to this weekend at the Boiler room annual weekend retreat.
There was a good time of worship and prayer in the morning and then we had the afternoon off by the lake (see previous post).

After supper, there was another time of worship led by an outside team - husband and wife, on guitar.
One of the songs he led us in was one he had written based on

Numbers 21:17 There the Israelites sang this song:
“Spring up, O well!
Yes, sing its praises!"

The image was of a well that had been filled in and no longer providing water. Apparently, enemies would fill in wells, to prevent others from using them. The Israelites sang to the well and it was unclogged and water flowed again. 
The song we sang based on this was "Open up the wellspring in my heart". We sang it first for ourselves and then turned and sang it for the person on our right and our left.  


Sunday morning we had an unpacking of what had happened the night before and people were coming forward and sharing. One guy shared how he really felt the Lord speaking to him about unclogging the wellspring in his heart. The leader asked people to stand who felt the same way. I stood along with about 15 other men (all men - very interesting. Later there was another issue shared and they asked people to stand and this time it was all women who stood).

The neatest part of this story for me was what came NEXT on Saturday night. Unbeknownst to me, there was a guy there named Cory who the Lord had told to give up drumming for a season. During the retreat, the Lord told him that the time was up and he was released to drum again. (He only shared this later). He was waiting for a time to drum but did not want to insert himself in worship led by an outside team, so told the Lord he would need to something overt.

About three minutes later, the worship leaders said, "If there are any drummers, Let them come forward". So this guy literally explodes onto the scene, accompanied by 3 or 4 others. He was WAILING on the djembe drum. They were playing several djembe, a drum set, snare and cymbal. Folks started dancing.

(This community is fairly charismatic in worship style but my impression is not that it is one where there is frequent dancing. I have not really seen any up until this point).

Okay, if you know me very well, you know where this is going. I have dance in my bones and it frequently comes out when most others are happy to just sit or stand. When this drumming started, let's just say the dancing sprang out of the well in my soul. And I danced like David for a good hour or so.

People saw me dancing and said, "You must dance like this in Africa" but I said, "No, not really. There is not a lot of dancing in church in Mali and in other settings it is normally the women who dance".
I was surprised to say that I had not really danced like that in 20 years or so. And it was a really great gift from God.