Moving for Personal Revelation, by Andrea Homer-Macdonald

Movement, text, discussion...these were always part of rehearsal. So why was a simple assignment to bring in sacred text leaving me stuck? In fact, more than stuck. Filled with anxiety. Thinking about copping out of rehearsal. Terrified to explain what was going on inside.

The subject of the text was to be based upon movement I had created in response to my writing, “I stand on what I’ve been taught.....and I stand away from it.” From this choreography, Marin selected one gesture, a backward glance, as its essential gesture. Through our discussions, the meaning of this gesture began to focus on questioning, even doubting. Doubt was a hidden fuse running back to my religious foundations.

One catalyst to the formation of Mormonism was a scripture from the New Testament, which states that anyone who lacks wisdom should “ask of God”. Accordingly, Mormons believe that individuals are entitled to personal spiritual revelation. It is the next verse, which counsels that one should ask with “nothing wavering”, that causes me the trouble. How can one lack wisdom without any degree of doubt or wavering? But if one has doubts, which I did, was James saying they were not prepared or faithful enough to receive answers? This conflict had been ebbing and flowing in my life for several years and it always seemed unresolvable. When questions bubbled up, I would gently, but persistently slip them back underground. Now my own movement was exposing this desire for spiritual answers to spiritual questions. In the process, all kinds of internal pyrotechnics were going off.

Did my canon of scripture defend and validate questioning? I could think of lists of scriptures that admonish one to build upon a firm foundation, to doubt not or to be steadfast and immovable, but not a single one that encouraged wavering or uncertainty. My movement seemed to have no scriptural basis, a dangerous realization for a religious person. This perception rocked me deeply.

While the supportive structure of rehearsal released some of my anxiety, ultimately, it was the movement itself that defused this conflict. I started to remember the whole phrase my gesture was drawn from...its groundedness, its confined suspension, how it moved easily away from conflict, its final look back.

Its look back. That look back was to something significant, supportive, meaningful. A look back to gain a new eye, from a new level, a new place. An attempt to find a fresh view, to create a new relationship with that which has given me peace and been my foundation. The step away and glance back was possibly spurred by doubt and conflict, but it was equally a step of faith. Perhaps, my movement suggested that both are allowed in my spiritual process.

Dancing this problem is releasing an old, stuck way of thinking and slowly getting me moving again. Beginnings of answers are growing out of the movement that grew out of my own questions. I can't help but appreciate the irony and mystery of that unfolding cycle. Simply put, it is personal revelation.