a bit of dancing

Yesterday we went to multi-cultural night at the elementary school. There was food from all over the world - my contribution being vegetarian "sausage" rolls - a nod, at least, to England. Then there was entertainment - the second grade sang songs from all around the world - our eight year old tried to make her teenage sister and her friends laugh between songs by pulling faces at them and so it went on.

I nearly left early but with four children in different corners of the room with various friends attached to them we would have ended up looking more like the Pied Piper than people subtlely exiting early. So we stayed and I am glad we did.

The last act was a group of about twenty very varied people. They were young and not so young - from a child who looked to be about eight to middle aged-ish folks. Men and women, boys and girls with every hue of humanity represented. They had simple instruments - a long stick with a string and a stone and a gourd - a berimbau. With two upright drums this provided a strong rhythmic background to the dancing - which is both dancing and martial art. It is called Capoeira and I have never seen anything quite like it - it has martial arts kind of moves done but it seems to be highly co-operative. It looked like pairs of people were coming forward on an ad hoc basis, switching out one with another as the mood took and half dancing, half mock fighting. The instruments were passed around, different people sang different set of words and chants.

This huge variety of people, some very athletic and others not so much, all shapes and sizes - a child in the circle with the most athletic and tall man. To me, it all spoke of a sort of harmony of existence which, of course, gave me an idea for how Church should, but seldom does, work.

The greatest and the least work together in this world of careful sparring. Sometimes two people would spar who astounded us with their turns and twirls, other times there were people in the middle who would barely raise their leg to kick above their partners head - but somehow, it didn't matter because what we saw was the whole, the group, the body working together to learn and teach and interact.

Hmmm........if only.