newprotest.org: SIMPLY DANCE

SIMPLY DANCE

June 26, 2008
by: jovial_cynic


The Where the hell is Matt dance videos have always been fun - Matt travels the world and dances his goofy dance to some catchy music. When his first video hit the internet, all I could think about was how cool it would be to be able to travel like him. To just go from place to place with a video camera, and experience all the places in the world.

I was scoping out several emergent-church blogs, trying to engage their writers in some conversation about the emergent church movement, and I saw that many of the blogs had several things in common. Not just the emergent theological discussion... but other things. Many of them had posts about their gardening adventures (like me!). Most weaved their growing faith into posts about their lives - a step away from the traditional "christian-on-Sundays" kind of dialog. And several of them had linked to what appeared to be a dance video of some kind. I went through quite a few of the sites before I finally got around to clicking on the video and discovered, to my amusement, that it was another one of Matt's dance videos.

This video was different. I'm not sure why, but when the video got to Matt dancing in the de-militarized zone (the place at the border between North and South Korea), I started weeping. Tears just poured down. Perhaps it's because of my own Korean heritage, and because my connection to the de-militarized zone is a personal one. It represents to me the horrors of war, and of the split of a people divided by a meaningless artificial boundary. So much death. So much intolerance. Whatever the case, for the rest of the video, as more people joined Matt in the dance, I kept crying... realizing how simple it is to cast aside meaningless differences and dance. To be like children. To embrace one another as fellow humans.


Why can't the world simply dance?

COMMENTS for SIMPLY DANCE


The Conservative Manifesto said:
Speaking of North Korea. In an interesting turn of events, Bush is lifting key trade sanctions against North Korea.
June 26, 2008


Stephen said:
I was going to toss my perspective into you comment about emerging gardeners. I've spent the past nine years working for churches and other ministries, but it's been in the past two years that my interest in growing food has started to show itself. Each morning, as I step into the garden to water or pull some weeds or just to assess the progress I find myself thinking, "The Kingdom of God is like a man who sows some seeds..." So often I find myself reflecting on the parables of Jesus as I am working in the garden.

Meditations like that seem to come so easy because I am stepping into the parable and not trying to conform the parable to me. It's a stark contrast from when I worked for a church as was trying to understand them by thinking, "The Kingdom of God is like a man who went into a meeting..."

The other thing that I love is the slowness of it. There is no quick fix to the problems you might have. This has really helped me be OK with the slow moving process of life.

Cheers.



June 27, 2008


jovial_cynic said:
TCM - Yeah, I saw that on Drudge. It's very interesting. I'm hopeful. But I know that it takes a lot to remove the type of totalitarian government that we see in North Korea, so I hesitant to be too excited about it. Communism doesn't really beget benevolence.

Stephen - the whole kingdom-of-God/gardening concept resonates so well with me. Between weeding, tending, harvesting... God is in it all. I gave a sermon a while back at my church (I was a stand-in preacher for a day) and used gardening as the central theme. I made the note that while gardening paints the picture of the kingdom of God, trying to maintain a perfect grass lawn is more like the kingdom of man -- an attempt to control and coerce (via chopping off the heads of anyone who stands too tall!) the world around us.

But yeah - it makes perfect sense that so many people of the emergent camp are drawn to gardening and natural living. I love it.

June 27, 2008


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June 27, 2008


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