It is becoming increasingly difficult to wake up in the morning. My dreams are just too interesting to part with lately. Last night's dream was particularly unusual, amusing, and thought provoking.
In my dream, I was enrolled in a nude dance class. I had no qualms about the lack of required dress or any concerns about my lack of rhythm or grace. Week after week, I attended this class consistently for upwards of a year, and I absolutely loved it. Until, one day, I walked into the the studio and was horrified to see a group of my friend signing up for the class. I immediately turned around and fled to the door. It was too late. I had already been seen. One of the other participants in the class called my name to ask why I was leaving and the group acknowledged my presence. Horrified, I was stuck... lost for words... and dumbfounded.
Then I woke up, grateful that the nudity was just an awareness, not a visual. Right now I know you are thinking "What? Why is she sharing this?", but bare with me for a second (no pun intended). I'm sharing this because I believe that God speaks to me through dreams, and this particular dream has a lesson behind it.
Let's address the obvious curiosity first... nudity? Well, God has a sense of humor, and nudity is actually a great representation of humility. Before Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, they were nude before God. They walked around as they were with nothing to hide behind. When you are naked, you are just you. Your insecurities, your fears, your abandoned facades, your appearance stripped of all your material possessions are all laid out there for anyone to see... There is a sense of shame knowing that you are breaking a social norm, but also a freedom in knowing that you are not living by the world's standards. Nakedness is intimidating. It suggests intimacy and vulnerability. It is also the place of utmost humility. You cannot fabricate anything or strip anything away... you just are.
Personally, the idea of nakedness scares me. Actually, the idea of showing skin in general scares me ... so rest assured that I am not promoting nudity in a literal sense. The idea of being "naked before God" has long been used as a metaphor for humbling oneself before God, and I think this image is an accurate portrayal of true humility.
Second question to address, why on earth would I enroll in a dance class? Here is a secret: one of my favorite things about living alone right now is that I can dance around ( and skip down the hallways) without anyone seeing me make an idiot of myself. It's a secret love that I would never consider doing in public because it's rather hysterical. I refuse to dance around anyone I know. However, if I am alone or in a situation where I will never see anyone again, I'm game. It is something that I enjoy, but also makes me extremely uncomfortable and self-conscience. The perceived judgment generates fear of people's reactions, and I flat out refuse to participate.
So, the dance class symbolizes: something that I value in life because it enriches my spirit, but needs to be refined before it can be incorporated into my public life. It represents something that I simultaneously love and fear. It represents an experience that I am glad to share with strangers, but hesitant to share with friends because I fear that it will damage their opinion of me.
I must confess that this is largely how I approach the idea of ministry. It has been a secret desire for awhile, but something I fear publicly addressing because I am afraid of judgment- mainly messing up. What if I am not really called to do this or I screw up? People I respect will view me differently. What will my friends think of me when they see how crazy I really am? I am fine utilizing my giftings and sharing my thoughts when I know no one in the room. Insert one good friend , and I am hesitant to speak. The idea of doing ministry excites me, but the idea of doing ministry where people know me terrifies me.
My dream reminds me that I need to humbly just be myself in every situation, especially when I am with my friends, family, and community. Members of a community need to be willing to humble themselves before one another. We need to share both humiliations and dreams, concerns and joys, the good and the bad. Until the facades are stripped away and we are willing to share what we are learning with one another, we can never truly say that we are walking through life together.
Learning and growing and celebrating together are a lot easier when everyone is themselves- for better and worse- and there is nothing to hide behind. The shame of our nakedness is something that the devil loves to use to keep us isolated from one another and from God himself. Ever wonder how God would have responded if Adam and Eve would have approached Him to confess what they had done and repented instead of hiding from Him in shame? Even though I know how the story ends, I find myself asking "what if". Likewise, I wonder how things would have been different if I had initially decided to be myself and bare all in my current Christian community instead of spending two years hiding behind a false enigma.
One of the roadblocks in the Church today is that people are too afraid to get naked. Humility makes room for God to work.When we collectively humble ourselves, we invite God to use our community to glorify Himself. In his book Fireseeds of Spiritual Awakening, Dan Hayes gives us this choice: "We can choose to stay oppressed and impoverished, lower the trajectory of our prayers, acquiesce to life as it is, accept our circumstances, bow to determinism, and embrace an anemic version of Christianity. Or we can humble ourselves, rise up, and cry out. It is choosing the latter course that causes the winds of revival to begin to blow" (45).
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