Sunday, July 31, 2011
Community worship each month at church makes me uncomfortable. I’ve often wondered why. It’s not that I believe that there is anything wrong with having the children in church. But I do find them distracting. Children often haven’t learned the social cues of when to whisper and when not to.
And how they pay attention to the music!
When I was growing up, we sang hymns. I liked the hymns, but there was nothing to them to make me want to dance with abandon. I should note that I don’t think that I have ever done anything with abandon, so watching the children dance wildly, with abandon, makes me very uncomfortable. It’s hard for me to take my eyes off them and concentrate on worshipping. And, yet, at is what the children are doing: worshipping.
But there are so many things I’ve observed as I’ve watched them over the past couple of years. First, it doesn’t seem to matter which children are involved in the dancing at the front of the stage. All are welcome. Two sisters dance together. Two brothers, one white and one black, bounce up and down to the music while holding hands. A small girl looks on as a circle forms, and the children open the circle to her, and they all hold hands and bounce.
Second, the children don’t seem to care that people are watching. I am watching, and I know their parents are there making sure that everyone is safe and supervised and not too wild. And, yet, the children continue on. They take the adult correction and keep going. They are focused on their dancing worship.
Third, the dancing (if that is what going round and round in a circle or bouncing up and down is) changes. Sometimes all of the children are in a large circle slowly moving around. Then they’re all bouncing. Suddenly, they’re all doing their own things individually. Then they end up all back together in a big circle. It’s fluid. And the changes don’t seem to bother them or interrupt them.
Madeleine L’Engle discusses this childlikeness in Walking On Water. As we age, we lose our ability to simply BE in the presence of God. Perhaps the reason I’m so uncomfortable is that I’ve never truly learned to BE in a corporate worship setting. I have moments on my own, but almost never in a congregation. That’s something I’ve noticed in Chaim Potok’s Asher Lev books. There are certain celebrations where the Hasidim dance with abandon with the scriptures, and there is nothing wrong with it.
I must remember what Jesus said in Matthew 19:14, when the children came to Jesus. “Leave them alone,” he said, “for the kingdom is made of such as these.”
