How can you dance with the devil on your back

Hard To Dance With the Devil On Your Back

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Hard To Dance With the Devil On Your Back

By Ray Buckley

By Ray Buckley

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In every culture and time, persons of faith, of all ages, have summoned trials and tribulations to find the endurance and strength to “dance.” They have danced with the weight of the world upon their shoulders, sustained by God and others dancing near them.

Hard to Dance With the Devil On Your Back is a seven-session Lenten study that looks at the transcendent struggle in the lives of believers, while helping us to enter the continually crumbling world surrounding Jesus and the disciples in the days preceding Easter.

Appropriate for both group and individual use, the study provides one session for each week in Lent. Each session includes a Scripture reference, a brief reading, questions for reflection or discussion, and a prayer.

The title of this study will remind you of the hymn written by Sydney Carter in 1963 "Lord of the Dance"

Sessions:
The Dance: 2 Corinthians 4:8-9; 2 Corinthians 12:9
A Parable: Luke 12:32; Matthew 19:2-5
The Wronged: Isaiah 53:3; 1 John 13:34-35; Matthew 12:20
The Wrong: Matthew 9:9-13
The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved: Judas: John 13:21-30; 1 John 4:18
When Worlds Collide: Jeremiah 18:1-6; Isaiah 49:16
Dancing with Holes in Your Moccasins: Matthew 5:14; Revelation 21:3

Hard to Dance with the Devil on Your Back: A Lenten Study for Adults by Ray Buckley, Paperback

Hard To Dance With the Devil On Your Back

By Ray Buckley

Abingdon Press

Copyright © 2010 The United Methodist Publishing House
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4267-1004-9

Chapter One

The Dance

SCRIPTURE: Read 2 Corinthians 4:8-9; 2 Corinthians 12:9.

When I was a child, my family and I attended a church that did not encourage dancing. To be truthful, this church didn't encourage a lot of things. My father used to joke that at times some folks were so narrow-minded that if they hadn't had noses, their eyes would have bumped together. There were moments when it seemed that about all we could do for fun was to be hit by a bus and get prayed over for healing. (That, of course, is an exaggeration. A car would have worked equally well, particularly if the driver was going to see a movie.)

In our home we danced. We danced to music—spinning, jumping, and falling down. We danced in fun. We danced for the pleasure of dancing. Dancing is contagious with children. No one dances alone when children are present.

I remember the first time I heard Aretha Franklin sing. It was more than just music. It was as if there were things inside that you never knew were there until you heard her sing. It was as if all the things-you-had-wanted-to-say-and-couldn't-find-the-words-for were right there in her voice. It wasn't just feeling the music. It was experiencing the music, coming away a different person. Somehow, when the music stopped, the world seemed incredibly quiet. You wanted to play the song over and over and over to keep the feeling. You looked forward to the time when you could hear it again. Sometimes people thought you were crazy, playing the same song again and again ...

I am not Aretha. I couldn't make those beautiful sounds. So I sang along with her.

In Scotland, when the English outlawed the playing of the great-pipes (bagpipes), Highland dancing, and the wearing of the tartan, people would go to church clutching small remnants of plaid between their thumbs and forefingers. When Irish clerics ruled that it was inciting immorality to move any part of your body in dance except your ankles and feet, the Irish began beautiful step-dancing, keeping the body rigid but moving the feet in intricate patterns and at varying speeds.

Among our Native people, dancing was a rich part of our cultures. There were social dances, times of community celebration, but there were also sacred dances. There was dancing that was prayer. In the late 1800s it became illegal to teach our children in our Native languages. The motto of one of the first boarding schools was "Kill the Indian, save the child." It became illegal to practice our ceremonies. Sacred things were destroyed or seized. Missionaries told us that our dancing was sin. When dancing is a form of prayer, and prayer becomes considered to be sin, then the spiritual core of a people begins to fragment. You begin to grasp for the sacred. At times you turn inward in despair, convinced that there is nothing good about the person God created.

In quiet places and in secret, some of the dancing continued, but some was lost for good. The lament in Psalm 137:1-4 became real:

Alongside Babylon's rivers we sat on the banks; we cried and cried, remembering the good old days in Zion. Alongside the quaking aspens we stacked our unplayed harps; That's where our captors demanded songs, sarcastic and mocking: "Sing us a happy Zion song!" Oh, how could we ever sing GOD's song in this wasteland? (THE MESSAGE)

In Canton, South Dakota, there used to be the Canton Federal Indian Insane Asylum. Native people deemed insane were sent there for the rest of their lives. It was closed in 1934. In the investigation by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which led to the institution's closure, it was determined that many of those incarcerated there had no form of mental illness. Some had received no medical examination, and no records were kept. Many had been traditional spiritual leaders who had refused to give up their religious beliefs, and because of that they were deemed insane, often through the influence of reservation missionaries. Nearly half of those held in the institution died there. There is a graveyard in Canton. It contains no markers and is in the middle of a golf course. These were the ones who literally refused to give up dancing.

The 2010 U.S. Census began in Noorvik, a small Native village in Alaska. As the first location for the census, media from around the world gathered to cover the first person registering for the census. It was the first time in almost one hundred years that Native dancing had been allowed in the village. Before then, missionaries had deemed it pagan, and it had long been illegal. Now, Native people from other villages came to teach them the old dances. The people of Noorvik had forgotten how to dance.

There are metaphors and similes so powerful that they can take your breath away. Imagine hearing the hymn "Lord of the Dance" when you haven't been allowed to dance. Imagine hearing of God dancing the world into being, God embodying the dance. Feel the weight of history, cultural and personal, when this line is sung: "It's hard to dance with the devil on your back." Yes. It is.

Here it is, laid out before us. Social, political, or other events may weigh us down in the dance, but the dancing is not gone, nor is the creative force that leads it. Dancing, after all, is not only a physical activity. It is an act of spirit and the Spirit.

It is hard to dance with the devil on your back. But it can be done.

In the play The Great God Brown, one of Eugene O'Neill's characters asks, "Why am I afraid to dance, I who love music and rhythm and grace and song and laughter?"

Following World War I, Germany was left in such depression and desperation (and kept there by world powers) that a wheelbarrow of German currency would buy a loaf of bread. We are reminded by the German theologians of the early twentieth century that one may lose everything and know that God is enough. After having survived a concentration camp as punishment for hiding Jews during World War II, Corrie ten Boom shared the words spoken by her sister on her deathbed, "There is no pit so deep, that God's love is not deeper still." The noted psychiatrist and father of logotherapy, Viktor Frankl, after enduring the horrors of four Nazi concentration camps, would remind us that everything could be taken from you (your home, your family, your identity, even your clothing), but not your ability to choose how you will respond. That response is based on that which is deeply spiritual and meaningful. That can never be taken away.

Dance The gospel is precisely about the dance. It is precisely about changing the concept of who can dance. It is about the right to dance. It is not all about the difficult times. It is also about the dance of joy. The dance of the spiritual life is real, and it is about discipleship that is real. It is about dancing when it looks like what you expected from life is crumbling. It is about dancing with burdens on your back, and still dancing. There is a Lord of the Dance and an inexplicable, inexhaustible invitation that is given to us. All of us.

The mind and spirit remember the dance long past the body's ability to produce it. You can "see" a dance even if you have no sight, and you can teach a dance even when you yourself can no longer dance. It is as if a phantom of the dance remains in the memory of our bodies.

Beautiful feet do not belong to dancers. It is human feet that dance, feet that must be coaxed at times to take the next step. Saints are beat-up, broken-down, and sometimes limping. Saints are also dancers. Dancing is not freedom from difficulties. It is faith in the middle of difficulties. For most Christians faith is not lived in abundance; it is lived in prayer. Discipleship is not an entrance into a safe world. Discipleship is a shared and sharing journey. In the dance, you are never alone.

Several years ago, I was in Nigeria. I had just arrived after nearly twenty-four hours of actual flying. It was pouring rain outside, and my luggage was thoroughly soaked. Even late at night, the traffic in Lagos seemed heavy. We arrived at the hotel where we would be staying for a night before heading inland. Even inside the room, you could hear the rain outside. I didn't really unpack. I just spread my clothes throughout the room to dry while I stumbled into a warm shower before going to bed. The flights had been exhausting.

Sometime in the middle of the night, I awoke to knocking on my door. I realized that it had taken me a while to recognize the sound, because the knocking became louder. Pulling on a shirt and trousers still damp from the rain and humidity, I opened the door to find two men standing in the hallway. One was our tall Dutch staff member in Lagos, and the other was a small African man. Both were drenched. "I know it's very late," the tall man said, "but would you mind if Eric shared your room tonight? He has come a very long way, and there is no place else."

Eric stood inside the door, carrying a small plastic bag and apologizing for disturbing me. I asked him if he would like to use the shower, and he nodded. I realized that he, like me, probably didn't have much of anything dry. I offered him my driest T-shirt, one that I usually wore when working. It was a 2X size. While Eric showered, I went back to bed, trying to stay awake at least long enough to say goodnight. It didn't happen.

Early in the morning, only a few hours later, I awoke to a sound. It wasn't offensive, certainly not loud, but different from what I was used to hearing. I ignored it and went back to sleep. But the sound continued, disturbing my sleep. Gradually I placed the sound as coming from Eric's bed. Finally I was awake enough to identify the sound as words—soft, rounded phrases, barely audible, but continual. Eric was praying, trying not to disturb me. He prayed for an hour. He prayed until I got up.

As we left the room that morning, Eric carefully wrapped the small pieces of soap from the bathroom in tissues and put them in his bag. I asked him if he would share some breakfast with me. Eric held my hand and prayed some more. We shared rolls and fruit.

For weeks, Eric had been walking, from a neighboring country. He was a refugee, carrying only a grocery bag. He had started his journey with a brother and had arrived alone.

Hard to dance

There is a story from Uganda during the time of Idi Amin. Christians would walk from their homes through the tall grass to pray in secret. As they walked, they would create a path through the grass. It was said that they could tell how their brothers and sisters were praying by the condition of their paths.

Sometimes we can tell how hard the dance is by the paths of those beside us.

It was Eric who taught me a valuable spiritual lesson: don't presume to judge how God is meeting the needs of others. How God sustains each of us in our life situations is not always open to interpretation by those looking in. This wasn't some lesson that I learned while observing him or conjecture on my part from having compared our two lives. He told me so, in almost those exact words. It was his country, his walk, his needs, his prayers, his brother.

Most of the world lives in poverty. Much of the world lives in political upheaval. We wear the same ashes of Wednesday. We arrive at the same Easter. And our prayers, the prayers of all of us, surround God like a mist. A plastic bag of clothes is not indicative of a failure on the part of God, the faith walk of one man, or the character of a people or country. It is a moment in history, a place on a journey. My heart broke, because I wanted Eric to be like me, which in reality, at that moment, meant having a couple of suitcases full of still-wet clothes. Eric asked me simply how he could pray for me. Need, uncloaked, meets grace.

I loved another deeply. I was not with her at the time of her death. After many years I have come to understand that I could have done nothing to prevent her death, nor to alter the circumstances of her death. For a time (a long time) I wondered why God had not been faithful to her in allowing her to die. Then I wondered if and how God had been faithful to her. We try to understand what is, to us, incomprehensible, because that is our need—to make sense of that which is beyond our imagination. It was her life and her moment of the death of her body. Was God faithful to her in life? Oh, yes. Was God faithful at the moment of death? Although I cannot touch it and cannot see it, I have come to believe it. There is a place of faith, both in the character of God and her own testimony (from an eyewitness account) that God's faithfulness to her was as personal as it always had been.

As followers of Jesus, we live in the real world. The real world hurts. Hurt, pain, illness, and crisis are not "where we want to live," but they are real. There's nothing spiritual about human suffering. There is, however, as Hans Küng tells us in On Being a Christian, a way to live, a way to dance, in the reality of suffering. Discipleship is not seeking (or glorifying) suffering. It is bearing suffering. Yet it is not simply bearing or enduring suffering; it is fighting suffering in our lives and in the world. It is not just fighting suffering but using suffering to change our lives and the lives of those around us. We are able to do this because we are sustained by God.

Frederick Buechner, in The Magnificent Defeat, penned:

What we need to know of course, is not just that God exists, not just that beyond the steely brightness of the stars there is a cosmic intelligence of some kind that keeps the whole show going, but that there is a God right here in the thick of our day-to-day lives, who may not be writing messages about himself in the stars but in one way or another is trying to get messages through our blindness as we move around here knee-deep in the fragrant muck and misery and marvel of the world. It is not objective proof of God's existence that we want, but the experience of God's presence. That is the miracle we are really after, and that is also, I think, the miracle that we really get. ([San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985], p. 47)

In her poem "Shooting Gallery," Luci Shaw describes some prayers as if we were in a carnival shooting gallery, shooting at tin targets, afraid that we might actually hit something and have to take home a prize. Then we see the feathers and smell the blood. The image is disturbing and poignant.

There is no dance without God and no dance in which God is not a partner. Everything that wounds us, wounds God; and every step we take in the dance, God takes with us.

Questions for Discussion and Reflection

1. How do we understand the faithfulness of God when situations seem impossible?

2. Is there a difference in how we expect God to be faithful to us in our culture and how we see God's faithfulness in other cultures or lives?

3. Victor Frankl speaks about our ability to choose our attitude in difficult situations. What is the role of God in helping us choose our attitudes?

4. What does it mean when we say that the gospel is precisely about changing the concept of who can dance?

5. Think about the story of Ugandan Christians and their prayer paths. How does your community of faith identify and support the needs of those within it?

6. In scriptures and in church traditions, we are accustomed to speaking of finding God's "presence." Does God as Person address our individual needs and situations? Explain your answer.

Prayer

Dance, O God. Dance so that I can hear your footfall. Dance before me, So that I can follow. Dance behind me, So I know you have my back. Dance beside me, So that I may know you're with me. Dance with me, So that I may feel your heart. Dance, O God, So that I may know how. Amen.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Hard To Dance With the Devil On Your Back by Ray Buckley Copyright © 2010 by The United Methodist Publishing House. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Laura Mvula - Church Girl

Only registered users can add translation.

Who do you think you are?

By whom you myself imagined?

You don't write the story, baby

You not write history, baby.

Wanna be some kind of superstar

Want to be some superstar?

It's just a game of let it be

it simply the game in "Let will be So".

Can you ever give up

you can whether you when someday surrender

Living in this masquerade

I live in this masquerade.

Singing of your sanity

Singing about yours sanity

Crying for the mess we made

crying about mess, which the we arranged.

how can you dance with the devil on your back

How you can dance With devil on the back?

how can you move

How you can move

Caught up in a picture perfect

I hit in ideal picture,

That will never last

which never not will be last forever.

how can you dance with the devil on your back

How you can dance With devil on the back?

how can you move

How you can move

Caught up in a picture perfect

I hit in ideal picture,

That will never last

which never not will be last forever.

In the deep of the night

AT deep nights

Did I hear you call my name

I heard, how you calling me on name?

Surrender to the light

surrender light,

It will never be the the same

he never not will be former.

Can you ever give up

you can whether you when someday surrender

Living in this masquerade

I live in this masquerade.

Singing of your sanity

Singing about yours sanity

Crying for the mess we made

crying about mess, which the we arranged.

how can you dance with the devil on your back

How you can dance With devil on the back?

how can you move

How you can move

Caught up in a picture perfect

I hit in ideal picture,

That will never last

which never not will be last forever.

how can you dance with the devil on your back

How you can dance With devil on the back?

how can you move

How you can move

Caught up in a picture perfect

I hit in ideal picture,

That will never last

which never not will be last forever.

how can you dance with the devil on your back

How you can dance With devil on the back?

how can you move

How you can move

Caught up in a picture perfect

I hit in ideal picture,

That will never last

which never not will be last forever.

how can you dance with the devil on your back

How you can dance With devil on the back?

how can you move

How you can move

Caught up in a picture perfect

I hit in ideal picture,

That will never last

which never not will be last forever.

(How can you dance) how can you dance

(How you can dance) how you can dance

With the devil on your back (how can you move)

FROM devil on the back (how you can move?)

(How can you move) how can you, with the devil on your back

(How you can move) how you can, when at you per back devil?

Authors: Laura Mvula, Dann Hume

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release date

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Stayin' alive - Ozzy Osbourne

stayin' alive

Stay alive

All aboard the disco train ha ha ha
All right now
Oh yeah

Well you can tell by the way I use my walk
I'm a women's man no time to talk
Music loud and women warm
I've been kicked around since I was born

It's all right, it's okay
You may look the other way
We can try to understand
The New York Times' effect on man

Whether you 're a brother or whether you're a mother

7 You're stayin' alive, stayin' alive

Feel the city breakin' and everybody shakin'
And you're stayin' alive, stayin' alive
Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin' alive, stayin' alive Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin' alive

Everybody on the dance floor darling
We're going to dance with the devil
Well, now I get low and I get high
And if I can't get either, I really try
Got the wings of heaven on my shoes
I'm a dancin' man and I just can't lose

You know, it's all right, it's okay
I'll live to see another day
We can try to understand
The New York Times' effect on man

Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother
You're stayin' alive, stayin' alive
Feel the city breakin' and everybody shakin'
And you're stayin' alive, stayin' alive

It's all right, it's okay
You may look the other way
We can try to understand
The New York Times' effect on man

It's all right, I'ts okay
I'll live to see another day
We can try to understand
The New York Times' effect on man

I am disco man I'm back ha ha ha

Everyone boarding the disco train, ha ha ha!
Everything is openwork!
Oh yes!

Well, you can say that I use my walk,
I'm Don Juan, no time for talking,
Loud music and hot women,
I was a dominant from birth.

It's all right, it's all right,
You can ignore it.
We can try to understand
How the New York Times affects a person. You stay alive, stay alive
Ah, ah, ah, ah, staying alive, staying alive.
Ah, ah, ah, ah, staying alive.

All on the dance floor honey
We will dance with the devil!
Well, I'm falling and getting up,
And even if I can't manage, I'm definitely trying.
I easily soar into the sky,
I am a dancer, I just can't lose.

You know it's all right, it's all right,
I'll live to see a new day.
We can try to understand
How the New York Times affects a person.

Be you a brother, be you a mother
You stay alive, you stay alive0007 And you stay alive, stay alive.
Ah, ah, ah, ah, staying alive, staying alive.
Ah, ah, ah, ah, staying alive.

It's all right, it's all right,
You can ignore it.
We can try to understand
How the New York Times affects a person.

It's all right, it's all right,
I'll live to see a new day.
We can try to understand
How the New York Times affects a person.

I am a disco dancer!

Oh, yes, everything is in order!

I'm back, ha ha ha!

Translated by Max Terebilov
Author's page

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Ozzy Osbourne Lyrics Rating: 5 / 5 4 opinions

How can you dance with the devil on your back

Hard To Dance With the Devil On Your Back

Hard to Dance with the Devil on Your Back: A Lenten Study for Adults by Ray Buckley, Paperback

Hard To Dance With the Devil On Your Back

Chapter One

Laura Mvula - Church Girl

Album

More albums

Stayin' alive - Ozzy Osbourne

stayin' alive

Stay alive

7 You're stayin' alive, stayin' alive

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