"In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go you know, and the way you know." -John 14:2-4
Learn the Culture: African Dance
I pray that I can portray accurately to the extent of my knowledge what is African dance and what it means to the African people.
As you know I'm in the process of learning the Zulu warrior dance, and have just purchased my first lappa for next Wednesday's dance! A lappa is basically a long skirt, but the patterns, like the dances, are stunning! Professor Rani told us to get one that "speaks to you, so that you can look at it and remember these times." I originally wanted one with green, like Rani's beautiful pants, but after seeing some patterns with red, I realize I need some red in mine, the color of war. I picked on out that has beautiful circular patterns of red and blue in concentric circles with white contrasting brilliantly with them. Later I realized I had picked the color's of my country.
Enough of my treasure hunting! I would like to talk about some of the things I've learned by ear and eye of African dance. Unfortunately it seems African dances was suppressed shamefully by Westerners as something primitive, simple, and pagan. Is that not what you think of when you think Africa? An impoverished land and simultaneously a primal, colorful, exotic place? It's a silly perception only true to the eye that has known only a different culture. Let me tell you, if Zulu warrior dancing is primitive, I must be the utmost base of a person! It's hard! And it takes just as much talent as ballet or swing or any art form!
African dance, for Africans, is much more than an art form; art for art's sake. In the rural tribal living dance was spontaneous, because life is spontaneous. Someone died? Dance. Someone gave birth? Dance. Someone reached puberty? Dance. Bored at work? Dance! It builds community, makes people participate in a greater whole, provides opportunity for courtship, brings joy and energy to hard labor, prepares men for the dangers of combat, consuls the hurting. It's really beautiful when you think about it! Unfortunately things are different now. An urban lifestyle is more constraining to spontaneity. Even spatially constricting.
Now, Christians had good reason in some cases to see African dance as evil. Voodoo and other such dances are dances that call for possession and are sexual in nature. This unfortunately is a perversion of the possession of the Holy Spirit we ought to desire (not a bodily take over, but a tandem companionship), and demeaning to God's greater meaning for sexuality. However, that doesn't mean all African dance is sin, like it may have been perceived by Westerners who colonized Africa.
I'd like to wrap up with what I find most intriguing about the Zulu warrior dance. Before we've begun the dance, Professor Rani has always yelled something in Zulu. "Ingane ikhala, ndoda!" (I believe is the Zulu! I only now know the translation). What do you suppose it means? "To war men!" "Prepare yourselves!" "Attention!" "Spears shall be shaken, shields shall be splintered!" None of these. It means, "The child is crying, man!" When a child cries what happens? People hasten to attend to it! When men go to war, what gives them courage? What empowers them to thrust a spear through the chest of another man? Because if they don't, their child, crying in the village, may be not be able to dance the dance of life and victory that they have. So don't think of Africans as primitive, or on some lower evolutionary scale! Step into their sandals, dance their dance! Understand that a person is a person, in the very image of God, no matter where you are! And we can learn so much from each other and love so much!
SPIRITUAL LIFE
Home has been the topic of my spiritual life this week, mainly because I miss it dreadfully. After listening to old chorale music I've performed, hearing from friends, watching the 4th Avenue Jazz concert at Dordt, calling home, it kind of climaxed last night in deep longing for my home country, for a culture I am familiar with, for friends and family who deeply care about me. I'm learning not to be ashamed of these feelings or suppress them, because that only adds to the torment. Why are you home sick? Your home isn't on earth anyway! Why aren't you happy? This is a beautiful country and what an amazing opportunity! Why are you lonely? Is not Jesus right by your side at all times? These of course are all true thoughts, but high expectations for my humanness in every moment. And Jesus understands that. He's not accusing me for having a down day!
With this in mind I'm starting to see new growth! It feels tough now, and strangely disorienting like when you're young and realize you're taller than the dinning table, but very necessary in realizing where home is and growing in a new culture! I was advised to not look back, that looking back to your old culture hinders your appreciation of the new culture. This isn't the case for me. That would be like denying a part of me, like boxing off my past 20 years of living and trying to become a new person in this new place. That is not helpful for growing as a person. It's kind off like when I left for Dordt and God gave me a totally new life and independence and dependence on Him! It was amazing! I loved who God had made me now, and I wanted to box up my past life and never see it again! Is this helpful? No, it creates an internal dichotomy that didn't help me heal from the past. It's kind of opposite now. Jumping into a new culture is in some ways a painful process that needs healing, and boxing up and throwing away your past doesn't help. Instead God has taught me how cultures intertwine, that to master a new culture is not to cast out your own, but to bring them together in beautiful harmony! Now that sounds all nice doesn't it, but what does that look like? It's listening to a song that goes deep into your past, like for me Shout to the Lord and hearing it in the new light of a different culture and of this new spiritual place God has put you into! It's praying for people at home and seeing how you can pray for people here similarly! These are two small ways God is showing me how to reconcile here and home to gain a new appreciation of not only my physical home in good ol' Iowa, but the spiritual home the Jesus speaks about when He says, "I go to prepare a place for you!"
join me: my dreams
I'm going to do something a little different. I've been having some restless nights with many dreams, some of which are just wisps in my memory and others I've remembered as intriguing or disturbing. Maybe an adventure through one or two will be insightful 😁
Now enter we onto a bus. Maybe it's inspired by the jammies, but its seats are most certainly more like the yellow school buses back home. And so are it's occupants. Not terribly young, and we younger than we are now, mid teens again. You're not sure where we're going. You perceive it to be a more pleasant place than high school, likely a field trip. You begin to interact with a girl from your distant and random past, a gal named Talie. She's a freckly white gal with strait blonde hair and her smile crowned with braces. For some reason you take responsibility over her, protectively. Maybe this reflects how you feel about the gals in the ISA program when you travel with them. Anyway, you have far greater powers in this dreamscape than you do in real life to protect innocence. The bus stops for no apparent reason than perhaps a break from travel. Talie immediately goes missing. So you grab some crime fighting allies and the three of us begin crawling the city. Maybe it's Cape Town, my dream mind has plenty of dingy city scenes to choose from. It's night, so it's hard to tell anyway. We find a suspicious crook. He reaches threateningly into his pocket as we advance with our defibrillator hands ready. At one point you switch to a pistol hand ability (gripping your one hand like a pistol as power shoots out your pointer and index fingers), but as we get close you realize a melee ability would be more astute. The man never drew his hands from his pockets before you palm him in the chest and shock the crap out of him 😄 We don't find Tallie, but by the sound and lights of nearby cop cars, you feel we're close.
I don't think I'll write here about my more disturbing dreams, but instead, lets whisk over to some nice dreams! How about a dream where we visit home!
Some of my lucid dreams have begun with leaving the front door of the house I've live in for around 17 years of my life! New people will be living in it by the time I come home, but my dream mind doesn't know that, and it may take a while for it to catch up 😉 Maybe this stepping outside as a start to your dream reflects how in your childhood the adventure always began when you went outside! Epic adventures to play out, magic and riding to war on the backs of dragons! Anyway, here you are, in your dreamscape home, and you know it's a dream. Suspecting that if you look at the landscapes details you'll confirm that it is in fact a dream. You look to the crab apple that is in the middle of the front yard. It's pink, in full bloom and as you look at it, instead of seeing pixels like a rendering computer your mind goes wild with depth and sophistication! You can see every leaf and a million of them, peddles merging with leaves! All pink. You look away like, "woah, thought that out wrong," and proceed to fly off and look at your home from a better vantage point, or perhaps explore the river bottom, a huge endless river of adventure in your mind's eyes!
Thanks for reading! God bless!
I pray that I can portray accurately to the extent of my knowledge what is African dance and what it means to the African people.
As you know I'm in the process of learning the Zulu warrior dance, and have just purchased my first lappa for next Wednesday's dance! A lappa is basically a long skirt, but the patterns, like the dances, are stunning! Professor Rani told us to get one that "speaks to you, so that you can look at it and remember these times." I originally wanted one with green, like Rani's beautiful pants, but after seeing some patterns with red, I realize I need some red in mine, the color of war. I picked on out that has beautiful circular patterns of red and blue in concentric circles with white contrasting brilliantly with them. Later I realized I had picked the color's of my country.
Enough of my treasure hunting! I would like to talk about some of the things I've learned by ear and eye of African dance. Unfortunately it seems African dances was suppressed shamefully by Westerners as something primitive, simple, and pagan. Is that not what you think of when you think Africa? An impoverished land and simultaneously a primal, colorful, exotic place? It's a silly perception only true to the eye that has known only a different culture. Let me tell you, if Zulu warrior dancing is primitive, I must be the utmost base of a person! It's hard! And it takes just as much talent as ballet or swing or any art form!
African dance, for Africans, is much more than an art form; art for art's sake. In the rural tribal living dance was spontaneous, because life is spontaneous. Someone died? Dance. Someone gave birth? Dance. Someone reached puberty? Dance. Bored at work? Dance! It builds community, makes people participate in a greater whole, provides opportunity for courtship, brings joy and energy to hard labor, prepares men for the dangers of combat, consuls the hurting. It's really beautiful when you think about it! Unfortunately things are different now. An urban lifestyle is more constraining to spontaneity. Even spatially constricting.
Now, Christians had good reason in some cases to see African dance as evil. Voodoo and other such dances are dances that call for possession and are sexual in nature. This unfortunately is a perversion of the possession of the Holy Spirit we ought to desire (not a bodily take over, but a tandem companionship), and demeaning to God's greater meaning for sexuality. However, that doesn't mean all African dance is sin, like it may have been perceived by Westerners who colonized Africa.
I'd like to wrap up with what I find most intriguing about the Zulu warrior dance. Before we've begun the dance, Professor Rani has always yelled something in Zulu. "Ingane ikhala, ndoda!" (I believe is the Zulu! I only now know the translation). What do you suppose it means? "To war men!" "Prepare yourselves!" "Attention!" "Spears shall be shaken, shields shall be splintered!" None of these. It means, "The child is crying, man!" When a child cries what happens? People hasten to attend to it! When men go to war, what gives them courage? What empowers them to thrust a spear through the chest of another man? Because if they don't, their child, crying in the village, may be not be able to dance the dance of life and victory that they have. So don't think of Africans as primitive, or on some lower evolutionary scale! Step into their sandals, dance their dance! Understand that a person is a person, in the very image of God, no matter where you are! And we can learn so much from each other and love so much!
SPIRITUAL LIFE
Home has been the topic of my spiritual life this week, mainly because I miss it dreadfully. After listening to old chorale music I've performed, hearing from friends, watching the 4th Avenue Jazz concert at Dordt, calling home, it kind of climaxed last night in deep longing for my home country, for a culture I am familiar with, for friends and family who deeply care about me. I'm learning not to be ashamed of these feelings or suppress them, because that only adds to the torment. Why are you home sick? Your home isn't on earth anyway! Why aren't you happy? This is a beautiful country and what an amazing opportunity! Why are you lonely? Is not Jesus right by your side at all times? These of course are all true thoughts, but high expectations for my humanness in every moment. And Jesus understands that. He's not accusing me for having a down day!
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| Who the Adventure Started with: My family at my birthday breakfast; July 4th, 2018. |
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| Who the Adventure Continued With: Ben Thorud, Andrew Zehr, me, Squishy, Ashton Veenstra, Ben Kaul, and Stefan Walicord, my mighty men of valor. |
With this in mind I'm starting to see new growth! It feels tough now, and strangely disorienting like when you're young and realize you're taller than the dinning table, but very necessary in realizing where home is and growing in a new culture! I was advised to not look back, that looking back to your old culture hinders your appreciation of the new culture. This isn't the case for me. That would be like denying a part of me, like boxing off my past 20 years of living and trying to become a new person in this new place. That is not helpful for growing as a person. It's kind off like when I left for Dordt and God gave me a totally new life and independence and dependence on Him! It was amazing! I loved who God had made me now, and I wanted to box up my past life and never see it again! Is this helpful? No, it creates an internal dichotomy that didn't help me heal from the past. It's kind of opposite now. Jumping into a new culture is in some ways a painful process that needs healing, and boxing up and throwing away your past doesn't help. Instead God has taught me how cultures intertwine, that to master a new culture is not to cast out your own, but to bring them together in beautiful harmony! Now that sounds all nice doesn't it, but what does that look like? It's listening to a song that goes deep into your past, like for me Shout to the Lord and hearing it in the new light of a different culture and of this new spiritual place God has put you into! It's praying for people at home and seeing how you can pray for people here similarly! These are two small ways God is showing me how to reconcile here and home to gain a new appreciation of not only my physical home in good ol' Iowa, but the spiritual home the Jesus speaks about when He says, "I go to prepare a place for you!"
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| Good Ol' Iowa: Truly what heaven must be like. |
join me: my dreams
I'm going to do something a little different. I've been having some restless nights with many dreams, some of which are just wisps in my memory and others I've remembered as intriguing or disturbing. Maybe an adventure through one or two will be insightful 😁
Now enter we onto a bus. Maybe it's inspired by the jammies, but its seats are most certainly more like the yellow school buses back home. And so are it's occupants. Not terribly young, and we younger than we are now, mid teens again. You're not sure where we're going. You perceive it to be a more pleasant place than high school, likely a field trip. You begin to interact with a girl from your distant and random past, a gal named Talie. She's a freckly white gal with strait blonde hair and her smile crowned with braces. For some reason you take responsibility over her, protectively. Maybe this reflects how you feel about the gals in the ISA program when you travel with them. Anyway, you have far greater powers in this dreamscape than you do in real life to protect innocence. The bus stops for no apparent reason than perhaps a break from travel. Talie immediately goes missing. So you grab some crime fighting allies and the three of us begin crawling the city. Maybe it's Cape Town, my dream mind has plenty of dingy city scenes to choose from. It's night, so it's hard to tell anyway. We find a suspicious crook. He reaches threateningly into his pocket as we advance with our defibrillator hands ready. At one point you switch to a pistol hand ability (gripping your one hand like a pistol as power shoots out your pointer and index fingers), but as we get close you realize a melee ability would be more astute. The man never drew his hands from his pockets before you palm him in the chest and shock the crap out of him 😄 We don't find Tallie, but by the sound and lights of nearby cop cars, you feel we're close.
I don't think I'll write here about my more disturbing dreams, but instead, lets whisk over to some nice dreams! How about a dream where we visit home!
Some of my lucid dreams have begun with leaving the front door of the house I've live in for around 17 years of my life! New people will be living in it by the time I come home, but my dream mind doesn't know that, and it may take a while for it to catch up 😉 Maybe this stepping outside as a start to your dream reflects how in your childhood the adventure always began when you went outside! Epic adventures to play out, magic and riding to war on the backs of dragons! Anyway, here you are, in your dreamscape home, and you know it's a dream. Suspecting that if you look at the landscapes details you'll confirm that it is in fact a dream. You look to the crab apple that is in the middle of the front yard. It's pink, in full bloom and as you look at it, instead of seeing pixels like a rendering computer your mind goes wild with depth and sophistication! You can see every leaf and a million of them, peddles merging with leaves! All pink. You look away like, "woah, thought that out wrong," and proceed to fly off and look at your home from a better vantage point, or perhaps explore the river bottom, a huge endless river of adventure in your mind's eyes!
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| Where the Adventure Began: The crab apple in the front yard. |
Thanks for reading! God bless!
I enjoy these thoughtful posts....I’m eager to see you tribal dress and hear so much more. We miss you being here, but seeing how God is working in your life is very exciting. Love you!
ReplyDeleteI miss you and John too! I've been going to an evening church, so it turns out that I still go to church at the same time as you guys (granted a half hour earlier now)!
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