The Great Divide
There is no patent on "Connecting with the Creator" and so no one way can claim to be the only True Way. This was glaringly obvious yesterday. As part of the El dia de Los Muertos observances, the very first dance was, as usual, performed by a marvelous local Aztec dance group in front of St. Vincent de Paul Church, in Petaluma. Is there a way to really describe what overwhelming effect it had on the audience, especially the children? All I could think was the huge edifice of a church with all its costly fittings, rituals, sermons and concocted ways of relating to the Divine superimposed on so many on false yet attractive premises could not hold a single candle to the movements and spirit yielded by
these barefoot dancers. For here I saw immigrants in whose blood this special and natural, not alien connection with the Creator, born from a land of their heritage, found a release and so surfaced through this single performance!! How sad to think of the destruction of many such beautiful traditions, all over the world by the patenting of "connecting with the creator". The hold that the smell of the copal fumes when raised to all the directions, the sounds of the drums and the footwork, the colors of the feathers and most of all that oneness with the divine that reflected on the faces of the performers regardless of their age, as they gave in totally to the dance, is what remained with me, as I quietly left the place with a special love and awe towards the Creator. A Great Divide loomed between the church and this dance.
October 4, 2015