{"id":915,"date":"2014-07-06T11:00:25","date_gmt":"2014-07-06T15:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=915"},"modified":"2019-11-05T12:15:53","modified_gmt":"2019-11-05T17:15:53","slug":"dance-then","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2014\/07\/06\/dance-then\/","title":{"rendered":"Dance, then"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the whole service.<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here for the sermon only.<\/a><\/p>\n

‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free<\/p>\n

‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,<\/p>\n

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,<\/p>\n

‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.<\/p>\n

When true simplicity is gained,<\/p>\n

To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed,<\/p>\n

To turn, turn will be our delight,<\/p>\n

Till by turning, turning we come ’round right.<\/p>\n

-Elder Joseph Brackett<\/p>\n

Turning<\/p>\n

Wisdom: to live is to turn.\u00a0 This is the wisdom cultivated by the Shakers, from whom we receive the song \u201cSimple Gifts:\u201d to live is to turn.\u00a0 Life is not lived in its fullness by rejecting the body for the spirit, but rather in turning, turning body and spirit to God.<\/p>\n

To turn is such a simple thing.\u00a0 In fact, it begins in simplicity.\u00a0 It begins in clearing away our own strivings and yearnings and longings.\u00a0 Only then can we attend to and appreciate the goodness in the world around us that shows us, in turn, how to be good.\u00a0 To be sure, the chaff grows with the wheat, but the goodness is there, if we slow down and pause long enough to see it, if we turn toward it, and turn ourselves in response.<\/p>\n

And yet, the gift of simplicity is so far from our late modern condition.\u00a0 Rather than clearing away our strivings, our yearnings, our longings to see what good might be found, we insist that our strivings, our yearnings, our longings are<\/i> the good.\u00a0 Ideology rules the day. \u00a0Awe, wonder, history, and mystery are pushed aside.<\/p>\n

Life becomes like the vacation from hell.\u00a0 Piled all into the car, the family sets out, bound for swimming and hiking and canoeing and bicycling and golf.\u00a0 Of course, in order to make the drive all in one day, there is no time to stop.\u00a0 There is no time to pull off and see the view over and down through the valley, to marvel that someone born and raised in such a small cabin could rise to the presidency of the United States, or to ponder the significance of the world\u2019s largest ball of string.\u00a0 In fact, the only stopping is to pump gas and take a quick bathroom break.\u00a0 Lunch is packed in a cooler and will be eaten in the car.\u00a0 The itinerary for the week is set and it is a tight squeeze.\u00a0 Monday will be spent swimming and lying on the beach.\u00a0 Tuesday is mountain climbing.\u00a0 Wednesday is a canoe expedition.\u00a0 Thursday is a bike hike.\u00a0 Friday is golf.\u00a0 And if it should rain?\u00a0 Well, it mustn\u2019t.\u00a0 Then back in the car for a day\u2019s drive home where the family passes out from exhaustion, needing a vacation from their vacation.<\/p>\n

For the present generation of emerging adults, simplicity is not even pretended as a virtue, yea, does not even register.\u00a0 Having been raised on a steady diet of soccer practice, band rehearsal, dance lessons, community service hours, and scouting, on top of school work and chores when they were younger and a part time job as soon as they grew old enough for such not to be illegal, since they were five years old, or really four years old for a large majority, and three years old for more than a few whose parents have a particular competitiveness, the linear life has been the norm for all that they have known of it; life, that is.\u00a0 It is not even that soccer, band, dance, community service, scouting, school, chores, and work are understood to be goods in their own right, or even goods for the sake of developing a well-rounded person.\u00a0 No, the ethic is that we must be so overcommitted, overworked, overbooked, and overwhelmed in order to get into college, get a job, get married, build a home, have children, and start the whole process over again.\u00a0 Most recently, it is not even the case that many parents aspire for their children to get into a top-tier college and then get a high-powered job.\u00a0 That might be nice, but really getting into any college at all would be an accomplishment and getting a job that pays more than minimum wage would be enough of an achievement.\u00a0 Our imaginations, our hopes, our dreams about what life can be, should be, might be are reduced to the aspiration to subsist, and we are paranoid that even in the wake of all of that striving, we might not.<\/p>\n

What would it look like to turn?\u00a0 What would it look like to abandon the linear narrative, embrace simplicity, appreciate the world around us, apprehend the good inherent there, align our lives with the grain of the universe?\u00a0 What good news might there be for emerging adults to abandon this mindset, and what good news might there be from<\/i> emerging adults for both subsequent generations, and perhaps even their elders?<\/p>\n

Emergence<\/p>\n

To begin with, we will need to grapple with the fact that emerging adults are doing just that.\u00a0 They are emerging. \u00a0Most frequently the concept of \u201cemerging adulthood\u201d is simply a category to describe 18-25 year olds who are no longer adolescents but whom we are not quite sure we really want to consider full-fledged adults just yet.\u00a0 It may do us some good, however, to worry this concept just a bit, to introduce some nuance, some complexity, and to do so by meandering across Commonwealth Avenue and taking a stroll down Cummington Mall to pay a visit to our neighbors in the natural sciences.<\/p>\n

Emergence in the scientific community is a technical term for describing the process by which smaller, simpler things, when put together in the right relationships and under the right conditions, become bigger, more complex things, except that the bigger, more complex thing has properties that none of the smaller, simpler things had.\u00a0 This is to say that the full reality of the higher order thing could not have been predicted from an analysis of the lower order things that make it up.\u00a0\u00a0 For example, the full reality of a human person with awareness, language, reason, complex emotional states, purpose, and many more qualities cannot be predicted from the cells, organs, and systems that make up human physiology.\u00a0 Furthermore, it is not merely that the higher order thing, such as a human person, cannot be predicted simply due to a lack of fully understanding human physiology.\u00a0 Rather, the unpredictability is there in principle<\/i>.\u00a0 Emergence denies the viability of a strict determinism.\u00a0 Emergence is a messy process.\u00a0 Putting things together in the same pattern in the same environment sometimes does not generate the emergent property.\u00a0 And sometimes it generates a different emerging property than the last time those things were put together in that pattern in that environment.<\/p>\n

This is good news for emerging adults!\u00a0 The life that you are emerging from does not determine your life as a whole.\u00a0 Soccer plus band plus dance plus community service plus scouting plus school plus chores plus work does not equal your life.\u00a0 There is freedom to become more than the sum of your parts.\u00a0 You are not destined to become a doctor or a lawyer or a concert pianist simply because your parents put you on what they thought was the track to becoming such.\u00a0 Just ask Cordaro Rodriguez.\u00a0 He graduated from the Boston University School of Law, passed the bar, and gave up on the challenging legal market to pursue his passion for music with three other BU alumni in Sons of Serendip, which is competing this season on America\u2019s Got Talent.\u00a0 Emergence is a turning from the limits of what must be to the power and potential of what can yet become.<\/p>\n

Development<\/p>\n

Just as emerging adults are emerging, so too are they developing.\u00a0 \u201cIn [Christ Jesus] the whole structure [of the household of God] is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord.\u201d\u00a0 Emerging adults are growing, are changing, are developing.<\/p>\n

What John Henry Newman said about the development of ideas may just as well apply to the development of persons:<\/p>\n

\u201cBut whatever be the risk of corruption from intercourse with the world around, such a risk must be encountered if a great idea [or person] is duly to be understood, and much more if it is to be fully exhibited. It is elicited and expanded by trial, and battles into perfection and supremacy. Nor does it escape the collision of opinion even in its earlier years, nor does it remain truer to itself, and with a better claim to be considered one and the same, though externally protected from vicissitude and change. It is indeed sometimes said that the stream is clearest near the spring. Whatever use may fairly be made of this image, it does not apply to the history of a philosophy or belief [or person], which on the contrary is more equable, and purer, and stronger, when its bed has become deep, and broad, and full. It necessarily rises out of an existing state of things, and for a time savours of the soil. Its vital element needs disengaging from what is foreign and temporary, and is employed in efforts after freedom which become more vigorous and hopeful as its years increase. Its beginnings are no measure of its capabilities, nor of its scope. At first no one knows what it is, or what it is worth. It remains perhaps for a time quiescent; it tries, as it were, its limbs, and proves the ground under it, and feels its way. From time to time it makes essays which fail, and are in consequence abandoned. It seems in suspense which way to go; it wavers, and at length strikes out in one definite direction. In time it enters upon strange territory; points of controversy alter their bearing; parties rise and fall around it; dangers and hopes appear in new relations; and old principles reappear under new forms. It changes with them in order to remain the same. In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.\u201d<\/p>\n

What, you missed that last line?\u00a0 I\u2019ll repeat it.\u00a0 \u201cTo live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.\u201d<\/p>\n

Engaged, as they are, then, in such a process of development, should we be surprised that emerging adults buck and bite at the chafing of the linear narrative of life?<\/p>\n

In his New York Times op-ed last week entitled \u201cWhy Teenagers are Crazy,\u201d Richard Friedman of Weill Cornell Medical College notes that both the reward center of the brain and the region that processes fear are overdeveloped in adolescents and emerging adults.\u00a0 The result is simultaneously a tendency toward \u201crisk taking, emotional drama and all forms of outlandish behavior,\u201d and a surge in \u201canxiety and fearfulness.\u201d\u00a0 The linear narrative of life provokes the former, and reinforces the latter.\u00a0 To turn is to take a few risks and to simplify is to ameliorate fear and anxiety.<\/p>\n

When true simplicity is gained,<\/p>\n

To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed,<\/p>\n

To turn, turn will be our delight,<\/p>\n

Till by turning, turning we come ’round right.<\/p>\n

Elder Joseph Brackett may have known something about emerging adulthood.<\/p>\n

Doubt<\/p>\n

Christian Smith claims to know something about emerging adulthood.\u00a0 He and his colleagues who wrote Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood<\/i> are deeply concerned by the moral relativism, acceptance of the socio-economic status quo, routine intoxication, ambiguity about sexual relationships, and political apathy they find among emerging adults.<\/p>\n

It is notable that the standard against which Smith and his colleagues are measuring emerging adults is precisely the linear narrative of life.\u00a0 Given that emerging adulthood is actually a time of emergence and development, however, it seems that a substantial proportion of the beliefs and behaviors they find so concerning should be expected in people who have overdeveloped reward and fear processing centers resulting in anxiety, fearfulness, risk taking, emotional drama, and all forms of outlandish behavior, all of which are provoked and reinforced by the linear narrative Smith and friends are measuring them against.<\/p>\n

Maybe rather than bemoaning the reality of emerging adulthood, we should place some hope in what emerging adults have to teach us.\u00a0 After all, anxiety, fearfulness, risk taking, and emotional drama, under the right conditions, can emerge into something quite fruitful, that being doubt.\u00a0 The first thing that emerging adults are likely to doubt is themselves.\u00a0 Of course, many measure themselves against the linear narrative that no one could possibly actually achieve anyway and that is wildly inappropriate to begin with, so how could they do anything but doubt themselves?\u00a0 Many emerging adults doubt the value, efficacy, and viability of political and civic institutions.\u00a0 But then, don\u2019t we all?\u00a0 Congress has an approval rating of 7%, for goodness sake!\u00a0 Religious leaders are no better, all too often continuing to exclude women, demean people of color, and excoriate lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons.\u00a0 Emerging adults may not yet have a coherent moral framework, but they sure do know what they consider immoral!\u00a0 Small wonder, then, that so many emerging adults look out on the socio-political landscape and despair, resigning themselves to what little happiness they can find in their little corner.<\/p>\n

\u2018Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe,\u2019 said Thomas.\u00a0 Thomas was clearly an emerging adult.\u00a0 He had every reason to doubt.\u00a0 Jesus had been crucified, died, and was buried.\u00a0 After touching Jesus\u2019 hands and his side, Thomas said, \u2018My Lord and my God!\u2019 He experienced what was possible.\u00a0 It may yet be that emerged adults will manage to show emerging adults what is possible today, but I find myself siding with the emerging adults and doubting any such expectation.\u00a0 Rather, emerging adults are left in the position of those who would come after Thomas, of those who would come after Jesus ascended.\u00a0 \u2018Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.\u2019\u00a0 Blessed are those who have not seen and yet still dream and enact new realities.<\/p>\n

Dance<\/p>\n

To doubt.\u00a0 To develop.\u00a0 To emerge.\u00a0 To turn.\u00a0 There is good news regarding emerging adulthood here if we are willing to listen for it.\u00a0 Measured against the standard of a linear narrative of life, doubt, development, emergence, and turning will never measure up.\u00a0 The unit of measure is inappropriate.\u00a0 The appropriate unit of measure is not a line but a dance.\u00a0 Step, roll, clap, turn.<\/p>\n

Dance, then, wherever you may be;<\/p>\n

I am the Lord of the Dance, said he.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019ll lead you all wherever you may be,<\/p>\n

and I\u2019ll lead you all in the dance, said he.<\/p>\n

Both the hymn that opened our service and the hymn we are about to sing depict the meaning and significance of Jesus\u2019 life as a dance.\u00a0 Jesus was born and laid in a manger.\u00a0 He developed and was baptized by the Holy Spirit and the voice of God.\u00a0 Jesus was tempted, doubted, and overcame to return to the dance.\u00a0 He emerged as a prophet, a healer, a savior, beyond any and all ability to predict.\u00a0\u00a0 Jesus turned to hell and returned to heaven.<\/p>\n

Jesus was an emerging adult.\u00a0 In Jesus is the hope of resurrection.\u00a0 Jesus leads us in the dance of life and into the general dance of eternity.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019ll lead you all wherever you may be,<\/p>\n

and I\u2019ll lead you all in the dance, said he.<\/p>\n

Amen.<\/p>\n

~Br. Lawrence A. Whitney, LC+<\/em><\/p>\n

University Chaplain for Community Life<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the whole service. Click here for the sermon only. ‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free ‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be, And when we find ourselves in the place just right, ‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=915"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2390,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915\/revisions\/2390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}