Just before the Nablus show, the choir was ready early so they circled up and began praying. Perhaps they did this more often, but I had not yet witnessed it. I would have joined them as I love it when people pray or meditate or connect with God. I am Christian by birth and baptism so I was familiar with the held hands of a circle, the bowed heads and requests for being vessels for God to speak through them. Once last year, I participated in the Muslim prayer with Kamel, Razi, Abed and Nisbat. They pray side by side after washing and cleansing, they face Mecca and bow their entire body to God’s presence. I wanted to feel it in my body for I am not only naturally a monotheistic person in my deep core beliefs but also understand life through movement. We are all praying to the same God even those who do not know it. I have not followed my religious upbringing but have taken a broader more encompassing path in my personal relationship with God; being far more spiritual then religious. I have never understood the way many religious people believe there is only one road to God. It’s not so much a road rather a connection and just like water takes many paths to the sea in it’s never ending cycle from water to air to land and back to sea again, so we all do with God. God is not the sea or the air or the land but rather the cycle itself. I admire the faithful and the way they spend time honoring and acknowledging that vast greatness, whether religious or spiritual or both.
So in this preshow moment of a prayer circle I was moved but not quite ready for the show and when finished with my preparations did not want to disturb the circle. I stood outside the circle and simply joined them in their final Amen. They dispersed and I found myself in a simple contact jam with one of the Palestinians, Faris…it felt like a continuation of the prayer to God, through my language, my wordless words. It was lovely and made me think of my dear friend, Joan Hanna and the magic she brings to my life as she lives this prayer and sends it up and down and over and under and behind and within and without every day of her life. She paints with her body and sculpts the air and friendships around her with light and gesture, sound and truths and teaches me to concentrate on the act of breathing itself rather then the air that travels in and out. She reminds me of keeping the child’s relation to the world at large and within and to play and to dance in all its forms and to be oh so very present.
Ahh the glorious exquisite world of motion and the act of prayer in the multitude of forms that honor and relate to the great force that is the very essence of life. This, I get to feel in every cell in my body in this world of the Holy Land where religion is the very foundation of society that reside here and the multitudes that flock here because of it. 99. Arabs have 99 words for God.
