In June of 2003 the Faculty established this opening academic convocation as a way for us to “set the tone” for the new academic year. The idea was that we wanted to have an event at the beginning of the year which mirrored graduation. The opening Eucharist service last evening and the closing Eucharist on May 8, 2009 serve as the bookends for our community of learning. This academic convocation and graduation serve as events within these two worship services which give us a moment to think ahead (today) and celebrate the journey (graduation).

Our tradition here has been that the President always gives the address at graduation, reflecting on the past journey of the graduates. Therefore it made sense for the faculty to elect a colleague who would give this opening convocation address, drawing from the deep well of his or her scholarly discipline to offer a vision of life together in this learning community for the academic year.

It was my honor and privilege to offer the first lecture in September of 2003. I suspect that some faculty colleagues felt that upon my reelection to another 5 year term as dean, I should be invited to give this address again. It may be they thought it would give me a second chance to get it right.

In any case, President Cooper-White, faculty and staff colleagues, students, alumni, visitors and friends, it is with deep gratitude, humility, great joy and delight that I continue to serve the church and Gettysburg Seminary in another 5 year term as the sixth dean, so thank you for the invitation and privilege of offering this address.

I spent some time this summer in my own thinking and reading attending to the ways in which we are formed to be people of God. For ethicists, this is attention to virtue. “Virtue ethics began in ancient Greek discourses about excellence, which the Romans translated later with the Latin word virtue.

Dance as a metaphor for ethical practice:  What are some of the Virtues, Habits and practices of life in a learning community?

A vision which I would like to cast in this address which might serve as a way for us to think about what it means to be a learning community in pursuit of excellence for this academic year, is to use the image of dance. I want to use this idea of dance as a metaphor for thinking about ethical life together this year.

During my summer work, I tried to spend more time thinking about fewer things. Earlier this week Dr. Stevens shared with me her image of that practice which is the tendency to either “water ski or scuba dive” I would add for the “aquaphobes” among us, to hike or to go spelunking, to skim over the surface or delve deeply into the subterranean meaning and to discern when to do which.

I spent significant time with Psalm 149, particularly verse 3 “Let them praise God’s name with dancing… I have never paid much attention to that one word translated dancing, I spent time reading about the derivations of the idea of dance.

I want to unravel some threads dealing with this image/metaphor and the variety of uses in the biblical witness. Then I want to spend most of our time developing this image as a way to embody how this idea of dance might help shape our community character this academic year. What could it mean for us to embody this metaphor of dance as a way to inculcate habits and practices of virtue, that is, developing a habitus of living the Christian life in this community of learning.

W.O.E. Oesterley’s book, Sacred Dance in the Ancient World, notes that there are 11 different Hebrew roots used to describe the different characteristics of dance (p. 44) One root also means to laugh and it is also used in the sense of playing and merry making. In the course some of you will take with Dr. Schramm in Ecclesiastes, you may research the root of chapter 3:4, there is a time to mourn and a time to dance.

The sacred dance among the Israelites was performed in honor of YHWH and it is evident that the processional form of dance was a normal mode in worship. (Oesterley, p. 81) Oesterley notes that there is a midrash which reads “God himself will lead the dance of the righteous in the world to come.” (p. 86) Psalm 48 which is translated “consider well its ramparts should read direct your heart to the dance.”

Dancing was the custom at feasts and a form of praise to YHWH.

What might it mean for us to Learn the Dance that our God is leading?

What if genuine curiosity about God, the world and classmates is part of our way of learning the dance this year? The curiosity of questions like, “I wonder…, help me understand” manifest an attentive listening-to-learn pattern that, applied to our fellow colleague’s stories, could enhance our way of learning this year.

Student of your discipline

There is a phrase at the University of Oxford, at the college of Christ Church, which is written in the inside cover of many books authored by a faculty member. It reads, “so and so, student of Christ Church. What this meant to convey is that when someone reaches the rank of a college teaching officer, they have finally earned the privilege to be referred to as a student of their discipline. Part of learning the dance, is learning to be a life-long student of the various disciplines you encounter here.

To be a student of your discipline may seem hard at times, particularly if you feel you already know than you will ever “use” in your ministry.  Then perhaps part of the discipline of learning the dance this year is to practice humility. It really is not all about you.

Learning the dance, challenges us to give up the idolatry of certainty that we have it all figured out and to open ourselves to the wisdom of the text, the tradition, and others.

Learning the dance invites us to be patient with each other and most especially with yourself as you learn the dance. It may also mean that you are stretched in some uncomfortable ways.

Daniel Aleshire, the Executive Director of the Association of Theological Schools, in his new book, Earthen Vessels: Hopeful Reflections on the Work and Future of Theological Schools, writes about the nature of teaching and learning in seminaries. “Teaching the lessons that form human lives involves discomfort, and when that discomfort is tended properly, it leads to wholeness and integrity. Learning, serious learning about faith and life, requires burning bridges, and theological faculty, at least the best of them, force students to light fires to false assumptions and inadequate understanding, and stand by them as they struggle with life on the knowing side of the charred bridge.” (p. 62)

Learning the dance is hard.

At a joint faculty board retreat in January, 2002 I shared some reflections on teaching under the title “The Delicate Dance”. Teaching is not simply about being the purveyors of knowledge. We know that learning is not simply mastery of facts. Jim Limburg, retired professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary referred to himself as a pedagogical pyromaniac. That is to say, teaching is about lighting the fires of interest in our students; firing their imaginations with the desire to learn and pursue truth. Lighting fires is about inviting students into the theological enterprise. This enterprise is a public discipline. It takes place in the arenas of the classroom, faculty and staff offices, hallway, refectory, congregations and church-wide forums. This public discipline builds bridges from scholarship toward other “publics” that invites a depth of theological reflection about what God is up to in things that matter.

Learning the dance is distinct from practicing the dance. I can attend to the proper steps, even examine the culture in which styles of dance are appropriated but still not “embody” the dance, that is, I can study it from the sidelines but never enter into the risk which involves getting out there and giving it a whirl. This leads us to the importance of “practicing the dance.”

Practice the Dance
Gil Meilander writes in his book on virtue “Being not doing takes center stage; for what we ought to do may depend on the sort of person we are. What duties we perceive may depend upon what virtues shape our vision of the world. (Meilander, p. 5) “…[we] may prefer asserting our rights rather than practicing gratitude suggests only that we still have a long way to go on the endless path toward virtue.” (p. xi) Ask and it will be given, seek and ye shall find, knock and it will be opened to you this is the invitation in Matthew

Share in the Dance
“Life Together” One of my doctoral professors, David Ford, Regius Professor of Divinity at The University of Cambridge, shared his newest book, Shaping Theology: Engagements in a Religious and Secular World, when I was in England last February for the memorial service of my Doctor Father, Daniel Hardy. Ford suggests that one challenge he sees at the University is to sustain and reinvent collegiality. He celebrates the gifts and possibilities in a learning community that seeks to work on difficult issues together. Ford quotes Randall Collins thousand-page work The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change, which is a comparative history and sociology of learning communities from ancient Greece, India, China, Japan, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, modern Europe and America. Ford notes that Collins discovery is simple. “… the heart of intellectual creativity is intensive, disciplined face-to-face conversation and debate between contemporaries and across generations.”

Ford further notes that, “… the inseparability of knowledge from questions of meaning, value, ethics, collegiality, and transgenerational responsibility. There is a term for that sort of understanding that attempts to think through such matters together, with a view to the better shaping of life. It is wisdom... It is classically the most comprehensive ideal of education, beyond information, knowledge, practice, skills. The goal is to unite knowledge and understanding with imagination, good judgment and decision making in life and work.” (p. 110) I think this is what it could mean for us to share the dance and not to engage in artificial bifurcations between “scholarship and ministry.”

Ford notes that the phrase “ivory tower” appears in the Song of Songs (Ford, p. 112-113) as part of an eloquent description of a beautiful woman, “Your neck is like an ivory tower.”  “The other name for this poem is the Song of Solomon, the supreme biblical figure of wisdom. Ford asks, what if the imagery of an ivory tower were to go back to these origins? The resonances with academic life might then be with the passionate desire that motivates us at our best, the elusiveness of what we pursue the ecstatic beauty of what we sometimes discover, and the abundant fruitfulness with which the song is filled. And the figure of Solomon, to whom, besides the song of Songs, the diverse wisdoms of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are also attributed, might inspire in us a love of wisdom that is also a wisdom of love.” 

This means that we share in this dance together. This journey of learning and practicing the dance is done together.

Persevere in the Dance
When we learn, practice and share the dance we may well encounter ideas, even colleagues or classmates that we might just as soon ignore. Perhaps we also need to be reminded to persevere in the dance this year. Perseverance in prayer and seeking the courage for engaging ideas that challenge; avoid “tap dance” -failure to deal directly with difficult issues, people, personal crises. There may be the temptation when facing difficult issues or people to “tap dance” around the hard questions. There may be the temptation, when confronted with theologies that unsettle you, to simply put on your skis and glide over the top. What could it mean for us as a learning community to deal forthrightly with the hard questions and issues?  

 Several years ago when I traveled to Malawi, Africa to spend a week with four other people from across the globe as preparation to write the document on Diakonia which came out of the Lutheran World Federation, we spent time each day in a number of villages and heard people talk about the work of LWF in their local village, and the work on reforestation, or digging a well to provide a reliable source of fresh water, or working with tending those suffering from the ravages of HIV/Aids. Every time we entered a village, we were met by all in the village. They would line up singing and dancing. About mid-week, our host informed us that we were heading to a village which had been suffering from several years of drought and the young male population had been devastated with HIV/Aids. As we approached this village, to my astonishment, we still were met with singing and dancing. We sat down to talk with the village elders and I asked how they could still dance in the midst of the hunger and sickness. Through a translator, they seemed somewhat puzzled by my question. The reply through the translator was simply, We dance, because that is who we are.

You may be wondering if this notion of dance is simply a dean’s plea with a list of hopes, and perhaps some shoulds and oughts. My prayer is that it is simply a dean sharing a word of the imagination of living into the improvisation of God’s leading us in the dance in new and joyful ways.

What could our life together this year be if we all fully lived into this dance? Some ELCA synods have taken up the task of “walking to Jerusalem”, what if we danced? What if we danced, in the middle of the difficulties and challenges. It is easy to dance in the good times, but what if we danced when it is especially tough? 

Conclusion
When I was a student at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio, Prof. Mark Allen Powell commented on several occasions that if Soren Kierkegaard could do it all over again, he’d come back as a country western singer. In my conversations with Dr. Stevens about the interesting Hebrew words I have mentioned, she pointed out two country songs, in circulation. One is a song by John Mitchel Montgomery called “Life’s a Dance”. One part of a stanza is “There’s a time to listen, a time to talk and you might have to crawl even after you walk.” There may indeed be times that you feel I thought I knew this and it feels like beginning again. The refrain is “Life’s a dance you learn as you go, sometimes you lead, sometimes you follow…”

A second song by Leann Womack, called “I Hope You Dance” also available on youtube, goes like this, ”I hope you never lose your sense of wonder, you get your fill to eat, but always keep that hunger. May you never take one single breath for granted, God forbid love ever leave you empty handed. I hope you still feel small, when you stand by the ocean…and when you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance, I hope you dance.  

May this academic year be one where we learn the dance, practice the dance share in the dance, persevere in the dance as a way to give praise to God and pursue excellence.