WHEN WE DANCE TOGETHER...

    Last Sunday at the Canadian Unitarian Council’s ACM Sunday Worship Service, I shared a wonderful reading about working together to weave the ribbons on a maypole, with Casey Stainsby, who was running the ACM children’s program.  The piece was adapted by Rev. Diane Rollert,  who was leading the service, and she says it was inspired by a passage in The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt. 

    I loved the opportunity it provided to review all the dozens of photos we have accumulated from our May First Multigen back in 2011 –and I thought many of you might enjoy finding yourselves in the photos! – some of them were projected behind Casey’s small group of children improvising the pole and dance, which was both delightful and amusing.  If you want to see more photos, please ask (or offer to help make them more accessible to us all!).

Reader one:

One day I saw a young girl in a field with flowers in her hair.

She was dancing all alone, moving in a clockwise circle while holding one end of a ribbon.

The other end of the ribbon was attached to the top of a tall, tall pole.

“What is she doing, moving around and around that pole?” I wondered.

There seemed to be no sense to her movements as she bobbed and weaved in and out, sometimes moving closer to the pole, sometimes moving farther away.

A few steps here, a few steps there, always circling in that same direction.

 “How lonely! How strange!  How ridiculous!” I thought.

Reader two:

But look, don’t you see?  A group of children have joined her.

They’re doing exactly the same thing, holding ribbons attached to the pole,

moving in the same clockwise direction, bobbing and weaving in and out.

Now another group of children have joined them,

they’ve taken up the other ribbons into their hands,

they’re dancing too, but they’re moving in the opposite direction,

counter-clockwise around the pole.

Reader one:

Oh, now I hear the music. [Music begins to play softly.]

It’s starting to make sense to me.

I can see the two groups of children dancing past each other,

facing each other as they circle in opposite directions,

weaving their ribbons in and out around the pole.

Look how the many colours are creating one beautiful tubular cloth.

Reader two:

This, my friend, is what it’s really all about.

One person dancing alone may look like a fool,

but when we dance together,

we are all connected, like those children dancing around a maypole.

Both readers:

Out of many we become one.