Can you dance and cry at the same time?

Today is a special day in my tradition of origin: Holy Saturday.

It has taken me years to unpack and then rediscover these days in a way that makes sense to me. 

I've had really good teachers and mentors in this area.  

They helped me see that the cross of this season doesn't have to be the ever-pervasive cross of torture and atonement for human sin.  That is simply one interpretation that emerged in one particular context.

Another interpretation leans on a more ancient symbol of the equidistant cross -- where both the vertical and horizontal aspects are the equal.

This represents the sacred intersection of Spirit and Matter, joy and sorrow, life and death.  

On Holy Saturday, we can contemplate Jesus' descent into the Womb of the Earth as that dark, moist place of death and decay, which provides the fertile foundation for rebirth and regeneration.

The womb-tomb and this equiform cross also represent the tensions we bear as incarnate humans, and which the Holy One bears with us through participation in Creation's Dance.

It is this same tension that I hope to gently bring us towards in this month's community ritual.  

It won't be an explicitly christian practice, so don't you worry if that's not your thing.

However, I do like to share that christianity -- especially the mystics and the newly uncovered animist practices of the early Jesus movement -- are strong influences on my own spiritual framework and practice.

In this way I hope to model that we don't have to abandon where we come from in order to live in a good way today and shape more healthy dreams for where we are going.

We also don't have to abandon any aspect of our experience -- in fact it's imperative that we don't do this -- in order to make room for the river current of life that wants to live through us.

So in this space we work on weeping while dancing, singing through heartache, finding pleasure alongside and perhaps even within the pain.

Check out the details and register for Making Room for What Is below.