ash wednesday: of ballet and spiritual discipline

La estructura del arte de ballet es una estructura que a la primera vista parece difícil, demasiado, infeliz al cuerpo y su natura. Pero después de años de estudiar, esta misma estructura apoya movimientos muy libres y grandes, movimientos de volar y girar, mucho más libres de los que son posibles sin la estructura. ¿Puede ser semejante a la vida espiritual? ¿Es posible que una disciplina pueda permitir movimientos con más libertad? (¿Puede ser aún en una teología protestante?)

As part of my current work as a musician, I have the joy of being in ballet classes again, this time from behind the piano (mostly). Ballet is a very demanding art form. People who encounter it for the first time might be put off by the turned-out legs, the precise positions, the detailed attention to arm and hand carriage. And then there are pointe shoes, another matter entirely. The whole thing can look excessively structured, unnatural, even masochistic.

But eventually, all that precision and structure and self-discipline leads to the ability to move with amazing freedom and beauty. Once the mechanics of a pirouette are in place, once the arms are in perfect circular first position and the muscles of the back pull downward just so, it's possible to spin and spin and spin like a top. Once the hip sockets and leg muscles have been stretched out by years of dutiful exercise, you can execute leaps that take you flying way up and forward into the air like a gazelle. And if one's back and abdominal muscles are very, very well-developed, one can bend one's torso in all kinds of expressive ways.

Unnatural? It depends on what your idea of "natural" is. A casual pedestrian, moving perfectly "naturally," can barely manage to hop over a puddle. He probably feels like an awkward collection of floppy limbs doing it, too. Whereas a trained dancer could clear the puddle and the curb as well in a clean leap, each muscle working with every other muscle, not an iota of energy wasted. The dancer's movement would look and feel far more natural than the casual pedestrian's. Sometimes after an evening at the ballet studio, the movements of the people walking around town seem unnaturally constrained: everyone is standing upright, everyone's legs are moving within a very narrow range of space, everyone's elbows are pretty close to their torsos.

The discipline of ballet stretches and strengthens the human body, until what's natural for that body grows and changes. One's vocabulary of movement expands greatly, and one's movements become much more free.

At the beginning of a season of spiritual discipline, I wonder if the same kind of freedom might be available in spiritual life as well. I've heard it said many times that there is a kind of freedom in obedience to Christ, but the way it's said always sounds too much like totalitarianism or military surrender to be credible. As if there is my will on the one hand, and Christ's will on the other, and my will must break in order for his to prevail. But maybe the spirit can be disciplined, not by destruction and surrender, but by stretching and strengthening under the sure guidance of the best teacher there is. Maybe there are stronger, freer, more flexible movements available.

To take two examples from the Sermon on the Mount:

Jesus says anger at another person is just as bad as murder. Protestant preaching often points out that we all get angry, that it's only human to get angry, and therefore we are all guilty and must repair to Jesus for forgiveness. End sermon. A distorted sort of liberation-theology preaching actually celebrates anger, when it's directed at the perpetrators of injustice. End sermon. We are often left without resources for stretching and strengthening ourselves out of anger. How much more free would I be without anger at others--particularly those I'm closest to? How much more resilient can I be in fighting injustice when motivated by something stronger than anger?

Jesus says lust is just as bad as adultery. Similarly, Protestant preaching often stops at pointing out that we are all lustful, we can't help it, and we must repair to Jesus for forgiveness. Although chastity is often imagined as restriction, I've already found that being in a faithful marriage increases the freedom I feel in friendships with other people, especially friendships with heterosexual men. (Not to mention the freedom I had from crass sexual invitations on transit and on the street once I had a wedding ring on my hand!) So I can imagine that a self-disciplined reduction in lust could result in a much more free and loving emotional life.

The earliest Christians saw spiritual discipline as being freed from the world's clutches. Maybe we can start looking at spiritual discipline as something other than a new set of chains. Maybe instead it's the exercise that will teach us to spin and fly. Maybe what's natural for our spirits can grow and change. Maybe a more disciplined life offers more, not fewer, possibilities for flexibility and freedom.