Dancing in chains of traumatic suffering: a life-style in discipleship?

I reflect on the paradox of performing a discipleship ‘dance’ during ongoing suffering and trauma.

The metaphor of  the dance has been used extensively to describe the dynamic relationship between God and the disciples. It has been  growing in popularity liturgically and academically over the past decade. Many studies reveal that dance therapy is promising for the alleviation of psychological trauma but is very dependent on the therapist, patients and their groups (Tomaszewski et al, 2023).

However, most people I know in the UK dance exclusively during joyful and celebratory occasions. In pastoral ministry, I have recently realized that the very notion of  Human-Divine ‘dance’ as a model of authentic and effective cooperation and participation in discipleship can be offensive if not off-putting to those who feel ‘chained’ by pastoral struggles. I am aware of the dangers of pushing the semantics of the metaphor too far. Yet the dance metaphor needs to be taken seriously because of its widespread liturgical and academic value.

The congregational study carried out during my doctorate research drew from a practical model  of discipleship from Long, Stokes, and Strickler (2009) who suggested steps for cooperating (‘dancing’) with God effectively. They  identified some obstacles to the dance such as self-reliance, sin, pride, impatience, the Devil, some people and some programs. However, there was not much mention of ongoing traumatic suffering.  Trauma can be so disruptive that traumatized individuals and communities can fight, flight or freeze. 

To Warner, Southgate, Grosch-Miller and Ison (2020), our senses can be overwhelmed, we can be physically silenced  and community systems can display an increase in conflict and dysfunctionality. For Christians, beliefs, assumptions and even hopes about the nature and modus operandi of God can be redefined if not blurred and abandoned. Ethically, Hilborn (2020) supports that traumatic events can cast emotional, physical, political, ethical and spiritual shadows which could challenge our worldviews and our assumptions about a loving and caring God.

Many pastoral encounters over my 10 years of ordained ministry enlightened this tragic embodied reality. I have witnessed many traumatized believers feeling almost ‘obliged’  to keep the faith: ‘dancing on’ with God in their traumatic suffering from illness or bereavement. Here is my paraphrase and translation of variations of those  feelings over the years:

’I have no choice’; ‘to be honest, I still have bitterness deep inside’;  ‘not my wish but it is better than any other alternative’;  ‘I am fearful not to dance, things could worsen if I don’t’;  ‘I would be lost without this dancing even if I don’t always feel like it’; ‘I have so many questions but I have to go on dancing’;  ‘at times, I do not feel like dancing with God but perhaps with God’s people who love me and care’;  and ‘dancing is all I have ever known, so sometimes it feels more like a habit and routine than a chosen, heartfelt delight’.

Many worship songs use dancing as an expression of our dynamic relationship with God. For instance, the hymn ‘Lord of the dance’ invites us to dance wherever we may be (Carter, 1991). The song ‘praise you anywhere’ acknowledges that ‘sometimes we have to dance through the darkness, sing through the fire… worship in the lion’s den… praise in the prison… stand on your shackles’ (Lake, 2023). I wonder whether we always have to ‘dance’. If we do, I wonder what sort of dance it might be. I wonder whether there is congruence between spiritual ‘dancing’ and our socio-cultural experiences of dancing.

A recent article in Practical Theology made me wonder whether the imagery of dancing is culturally and pastoral appropriate and sensitive in grief, trauma and suffering. Galbraith’s (2024) article on the significance of trauma theology led me to scrutinize the use of the ‘dance ‘ as a model of dynamic discipleship. I became more aware that if most people in the West dance mostly in good times, then describing whole-life discipleship as a dance be it collective or individual seems to raise questions about the practical and contextual suitability of the metaphor. It also raises questions of authenticity and pastoral sensitivity. For example, obliging most Westerners to dance after a funeral service would be inappropriate and even torturing.

I was born in Cameroon and moved to the UK over 15 years ago. I cannot assume that my African dancing worldview applies within a mostly white, old mining town congregation. Looking at trauma within an Afro-Caribbean congregation, Gardner (2020) describes how believers respond to trauma: collectively rather than individually, using the Bible to uphold God’s good sovereignty, and framing disasters as tests and trials preparing us for something greater. Gardner (2020, p. 145) argues that ‘our response to disasters is informed by past experiences and the need for survival of self and others. This is our history, and so we carry on and get on with life, normalizing the experience and regulating the emotions’.  To me, the dynamism and reciprocity of our faith can perdure in trauma.

I agree with Galbraith that traditional theologies on theodicy have often neglected the ‘who’ and ‘how ‘of suffering to focus on the ‘why’ (answers).  Galbraith rightly argued that ‘theologies which neglect the suffering body leave it silenced.’ (2024, p. 69). Wondering about glory in suffering, Campbell  (2020, p. 527) similarly remarked that ‘the task of meaning making can often be too large a burden to bear, too big an undertaking’.

This struggle reminds me of Psalm 137.4 where the exiled Hebrew people are emotionally traumatised and wonder: how could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? However, there might be more to the telos of exilic singing than pleasing oppressors. To Brueggemann and Bellinger (2014, p. 576), this psalm articulates an honest cry, ‘a bold act of faith as it publicly claims pain and take it to the Lord’, thus becoming  ‘an act of hope in YHWH’. Similarly, looking at trauma with biblical lenses, Warner (2020) concurs that the variety of the 150 Psalms represents the things God does not mind us saying to God; every human expression is authorized before God.

This makes me wonder whether a diversification of the ‘dance’ repertoire might help the dynamic creative and spiritual embodiment of relational faith amidst traumatic suffering and even if one is tied by its ‘chains’. In my contextualized modelling of discipleship through observations, interviews and a focus group, people ‘believe as they belong’. Discipleship is defined as a grace-initiated and vicarious  partnership/cooperation with God, in a ceilidh-like relationship.

One could perhaps dance in chain for the dance of discipleship is triggered by sustaining grace. This means that the dance does not just depends on what we are able to express by ourselves but what the Spirit of Christ can do in, through and for us despite trauma. My model connects grace to a ‘covenant’: God’s agreement with or commitment to believers. Being in traumatic ‘chains’ does not necessarily limit God’s covenantal promise to be Lord over our relationship by grace.

The dynamic between believing and belonging adds to this possibility. Belonging to Christ and to the body of Christ means that the discipleship dance could be expressed on our behalf within groups even when we are silenced or disoriented. My use of ceilidh as a specific metaphorical mode of dance makes this possible too. There are sequences in many ceilidh dances when individuals stand still for a period time, while others dance around or beside them: there is beauty and harmony in this. This can be an antidote to sociological and cultural individualism.

This belonging to a dynamic dancing group can enable traumatised believers to fit in or join in as loosely as they can. This can lead to the motto ‘I dance because we dance’ or ‘I dance because they dance with/for me’. This is inspired by the notion of Ubuntu: ‘a person is a person through other people’ and ‘I am human because I belong’ (Tutu, 1999, p. 34).

I travelled to Cameroon to attend my Father’s funeral ten years ago. It is customary for the bereaved to perform traditional dances in groups with appropriate chants and melodies. The Bantu culture like many other cultures across the world have a form of dance for every occasion: expressing joy as struggle. However, many years spent in the West have reduced by versatility to always dance even in traumatic grief. The Bantu traditional dancing and chanting in trauma, externalizes and translates our raw feelings and hurting in words, actions and melodies.  It was very important to choreograph and articulate my traumatic bereavement in songs and collectively. That was soothing, comforting and emotionally uplifting.

To be honest, I did not feel like dancing and chanting at first. Yet, I found it helpful to be among empathetic relatives and friends who danced for me, with me, alongside me, thus enabling me occasionally to join in despite the ‘chains’ of my trauma. There seems to be something mystically powerful about shared suffering which means that the sum of silences/immobilities can lead to words/ movements. Belonging can be so dynamic that it creates movements from the in-betweens, even when movements within seem to fail. This belonging gives authentic poetic movement to the bodily, cognitive, emotional disruptions caused by trauma. 

My unexpected experience of dancing and chanting in ‘traumatic chains’ has a paradoxical and mystical side. This resonates with Galbraith’s (2024, p. 79) conclusion that ‘trauma theology blurs the lines between immanence and transcendence’. During that dance, God seemed ambivalently both present and absent, near and far, visible and invisible, audible and silent, active and passive.

Existentially, believers are free in Christ but they are still influenced and even ‘chained’ by this world’s pastoral and physical challenges. In a hymn, Briam Wren (1991) recognized that humanity is ‘half-free, half-bound by inner chains, by social forces swept along, by powers and systems close confined yet seeking hope for humankind’. Traumatic suffering is part of what it means to be human. Humans are partially chained by suffering in an existential manner. If practical theology is to enable a faithful performance of the faith, then our half-bound pastoral existence could be not only articulated but even enacted.

This would not be done in order to ‘count it all joy’, but rather to avoid denial, to demystify suffering, to exorcize its shame, and externalize our pain so that it can be shared by God and others. Dancing in chains may at least half-subdue our trauma. This may turn the paradox of dancing in chains into a more acceptable existential possibility. Through the Covid-19 pandemic, some congregations, like the one I studied appeared to have grown, in terms of depth of faith and church attendance.

Following God’s grace, expressing and sharing personal and collective struggles in words and actions seemed key to this. Furthermore, the congregation reached out to its surrounding community in radical, practical acts of compassion which not only attracted new members but also delighted current members, whose commitment was reinforced. Dancing in chains with God and others appears to have been ‘fruitful’, then despite the individual and collective trauma.

To conclude, there may be a Divine rhythm for all our emotional states including our traumatic ones. In the hymn ‘teach me to dance’, Kendrick and Thompson (1994), reminds us that God wrote the rhythms of life and that our whole being is to praise the Lord. If actions can be genuine poetic-like expressions of emotions, then why put limits to ‘dancing’ in traumatic chains? Dancing in traumatic chains could be more than a professional therapy but a lifestyle, a free, therapist-less, communal and effective form of dance therapy. Grace-centred, collective and covenantal discipleship could enable this.

On the one hand, there ought to be more cultural sensitivity about the use of the dance metaphor. On the other hand, the potential fruitfulness of ‘dancing in chain’ collectively despite the spiritual and emotional shadows of trauma, invites us to have some cross-cultural creativity and imagination. Then we could perhaps say: ‘I dance because you dance with/for/alongside me’.

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References

Brueggemann, W. and Bellinger W. H., Psalms. (New Cambridge Bible Commentary, 2014), 576

 Campbell E. “Glory in Suffering? A reflection on finding meaning in grief through an interrogation into the phenomenology of suffering”. Practical Theology, vol 13, no5 (2020): 517-528.

Carter S.. Rejoice and Sing. (Oxford University Press, 1991) , 220-221

Galbraith E.  “Doing practical theology ‘from the places where it hurts’: the significance of trauma theology in renewing a practical theology of suffering” Practical Theology, vol17, no1 (2024): 69-81

Gardner  D.  Responding to disaster in a  Afro-Caribbean congregation. In: Warner M., Southgate C., Grosch-Miller C. A. and Ison H. Tragedies and Christian congregations: the practical theology of trauma. (Routledge, 2020), 134-145

Hilborn M. K. The ethics of disaster response. In: Warner M., Southgate C., Grosch-Miller C. A. and Ison H. Tragedies and Christian congregations: the practical theology of trauma. (Routledge, 2020), 223-238

Holy Bible.  NRSV.

 Kendrick G. and Thompson S. Mission Praise. (Colins, 1994), 936

Lake B. Praise you anywhere. (Provident Label Group, 2023)

Long, B., Stokes, P., and Strickler C. Growing the Church in the power of the Holy Spirit. (Zondervan, 2009)

Tomaszewski C., Belot R.A., Essadek A., Onumba-Bessonnet H. and Clesse C. “Impact of dance therapy on adults with psychological trauma: a systematic review” Eur J Psychotraumatol, vol 14, no2 (2023)

Tutu, D. No Future Without Forgiveness. (Rider, 1999), 34

Warner M. Trauma through the lens of the Bible. In: Warner M., Southgate C., Grosch-Miller C. A. and Ison H. Tragedies and Christian congregations: the practical theology of trauma. (Routledge, 2020)

Warner M., Southgate C., Grosch-Miller C. A. and Ison H. Tragedies and Christian congregations: the practical theology of trauma. (Routledge, 2020)

Wren B. Rejoice and Sing.  (Oxford University Press, 1991) , 378-379

Yemtsa K. B. A Contextualization of the  Human-Divine Cooperation/Partnership in Evangelistic discipleship. (2023). Available at: https://aru.figshare.com/articles/thesis/A_contextualization_of_the_human-divine_cooperation_partnership_in_evangelistic_discipleship_Believing_as_you_belong_within_covenantal_vicarious_gathered_and_pragmatic_discipleship/23815137?file=41785131

© Revd Dr Bachelard Kaze Yemtsa, 2024.

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