Spirit in Action
Dancing Peace in Cuba & Around the World
The Friendly Folk Dancers have been "Dancing the World Together" through international folk dance since 1986, and they toured in Cuba in 2010, Rwanda in 2008, Kenya in 1996, and many other place in other years. With a ministry of peace and connection, they've prayed with their full bodies and learned with each step. This program was recorded in Cuba in November 2010.
- Broadcast on:
- 18 Sep 2011
- Audio Format:
- other
[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives Of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, Creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots And produce sacred fruit in your own life. [music] Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along I thought long and hard before deciding to share with all of you listeners Today's Spirit in Action program One hesitation is that it concerns not only Essentially Quaker ministry, but it's one of which I was a founder I didn't want to go all parochial on you But I think you'll be very interested in the piece work Of the Quaker International Folk Dance group called The Friendly Folk Dancers Today's Spirit in Action show was recorded with the group of friendly folk dancers Who brought their program to Cuba last November It was a powerful and moving experience for all of us These neighbors from the USA and Cuba getting to know one another Past the nearly impenetrable curtain that has hidden us from one another for decades So much of this program centers on our experience in Cuba But also of our travels in Rwanda, Kenya, and elsewhere in the USA and abroad Words are no substitute for experience But I hope they'll serve to inspire you to seek out such an experience A deep spiritual encounter across cultures through movement and dance By the way, another hesitation that delayed me in sharing this interview with you Is the rough sound quality, resulting from simple equipment and poor recording environment I do believe that the value of the content outweighs the Midland sound quality So here we go to Hebarra Cuba for a visit with the touring friendly folk dancers Pete, Lynn, Demi, Kathy, Rosemary, Barry, and Sandra I'm so glad we could all join together for this edition of Spirit in Action We're coming to the end of two weeks here in Cuba Sitting at the moment in Hebarra in the Eastern End of Cuba Maybe we can start out by some of you sharing some of your experience Kind of summing up in a few words What your experience of this two weeks is part of the friendly folk dancer tour Two Cuba has been How about you, Rosemary? I've been delighted at the opportunities that Cuban friends have taken for outreach into the wider community This is something we try to encourage our host to do And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't But in this case, I think it's been particularly successful Pete, well normally when we go on tour, we preach the choir We perform before Quaker groups of like-minded people I think in this tour we have the rare opportunity of extending ourselves Beyond the Quaker community when we were revived by the Spanish-American house, Casa de Medigano To take part in the Cultural Festival And certainly expose others who would not normally hear our message to it Certainly when we were forming in the street the other night The same thing when we were at Barre at the beach where Columbus landed There was certainly a group of people who never would have ever ventured Or thought of venturing into a quicker meeting and never would have heard the message Let's talk a little bit about what that message is The password here is pause, you know, it's peace And I don't know if people are surprised by certainly Quakers in the U.S. Are used to talking about peace And since the Quakers here in Cuba are of a somewhat different strain From what we usually have encountered in the U.S. I guess maybe I wasn't quite as clear that the message of peace would resonate so strongly I thought it was shaking the world here. Kathy? Well, there's one aspect of our experience that's been very striking to me In the way that I think our message of peace has opened doors that we didn't expect I believe there's been something of a political impact of our message here That was possible because of our message of peace and non-violence There were a whole chain of relationships that were carefully developed over time Not the least of which was the reputation of Quakers worldwide As being a people who care universally about peace And who have compassion for the poor And I think that was known here way before we arrived There have been other groups who have brought that message But over time, a sense of trust has been cultivated And we simply came in, we danced and we sort of took the partnership In a very easy, natural way to carry it forward And I think what we saw is that there was a feeling of trust at higher levels of government That enabled us to get the religious visa in the first place To do something unusual, which was to dance here And then further to get permission to participate in the Abero American Arts Festival Which had never had the inclusion of anyone from the United States That was very well received on the level of people in the streets Who were happy to see us And in the long run, I think we softened some of the relationships Of some of the local ministry people Who came away with a very different sense A very different frame of reference about some Americans So I think the message of peace opened doors And really resonated on a political level that we didn't anticipate Demi, I can echo Kathy's sentiment here We didn't have to change our sense of what our ministry is and our purposes At all to really be emphasizing peace Or to offer our tour as a way that local Quakers can reach out And better have their programs and their facilities and their communities Their congregations known by the local people So in that sense we were doing exactly what we've always done in terms of our sense of mission But the timing certainly was excellent To be able to step right into this Ibero Monaco Festival And be so well received I think people were very eager to see a group from America come Any group from America would be welcome But clearly our message which was so focused on peace And so much a part of the general fun of the festival was particularly well received As soon as we started off with a piece of classic 1980s rock and roll music The basses for our dance and did a little just country line dancing The crowd was in our hands totally They were just loving what we were doing This was not the Quakers, this was the people coming to the festival Later one of the officials that we talked to One of these people that the local friends meeting has been cultivating Because they're very responsible for providing the government visas For all the Quakers who come to visit Most of them will be coming to either teach Or to help rebuild schools and churches and things But they're responsible These officials are responsible for the visas And his comment was Well we opened the door a little crack for you By providing the visas for you as a dance group Not just a group of people coming to rebuild And you in turn exploded it wide open And that was his comment not ours So I think we really were in a very timely place The right people at the right time to be able to step in and do this On more than one occasion then we were participating in this Festival of Eberomenico and people loved us because we were there as Americans And as dancers I'm sure that there's some people listening who are still wondering How does dancing promote peace? Anyone want to put some flush to that idea? Why is doing this international folk dance movement towards peace? How about you Barry? Well I'll address it on a personal level I tend to view dancing as a skilled hobby And I love good dancing But through the dancing that we do It's community building through dance I've seen many examples of how that's Accurred just in the way we interact with people Their initial reluctance and then their wholesale embrace of Dance as a community building activity And it's been really wonderful to see Change my attitude about dance In addition to what Barry said We also use the dance as a sort of vehicle for our message In that we put together dances from cultures Or countries that have been in conflict And that forms the performance part of our program So we can talk as we introduce the dance about How if people can understand each other Which they can do through things like dance or song If they can do those things together It makes it more difficult for them To dehumanize each other in the kind of way that's necessary In order for conflicts to continue And so in the performance part of our program We have ample opportunity to make that point And then when people get up and dance with us In the second part of our program They're able to feel as if they are Understanding not just with their minds But with their whole selves, with their bodies and their spirits What that process is like And it's very empowering Dance and music have a special power to move people That's why in the Psalm about making a joyful noise They are both included as part of what it means to make a joyful noise And we rely on that in terms of presenting our ministry To people to come back to that over and over again The power that it has is they're regardless of what kind of Theological frame you put around it And I think sometimes it's scary That's why dancing has been seen as evil in some authoritarian religions But we managed to get around that quite effectively by coming in And as we perform we kind of consecrate the space that we're dancing in And we hope that that space is still inaccessible one and not high up on some stage And then having done so created this kind of energy People watch our feet moving and you can just see their bodies wanting to respond And their feet wanting to respond especially to the kids who are less inhibited And so for the second part of our programs we always then invite everybody up And involve them in dances that are very easy to do And universally people respond out of that deep place of energy of joy Of making a joyful noise And it works pretty much every time That's the secret of our ministry And why we as a group keep coming back to it And doing these tours again and again even after now 25 years for some of us Last night when we were doing our performance and dance with the community There was an older gentleman who had a cane and we invited him several times To get up and do our dancing with us And he always pointed to his cane up until the last thing that we did And then he got up and did the dance with us And afterwards he was so grateful thankful We went around a smiling ear to ear Thanking everybody for his participation It was a real change for him that had been so reluctant to join in I want to mention something about the performance dances we do I could some of you choose one of the medleys, talk about what it included And how that worked with our message of peace, your connection with that? Rosemary? I think the suite that we do that has the most obvious message Is the one we call Shalom Salom Peace Or more familiarly the Middle East Medley In it we start with a dance called Shekani Which was based on steps by the Chaldean Christian people in Iraq Who at least at one point amounted to about 10% of the population Then we follow it with Deb Ka'ud Which is an Arab dance from Palestine And then an Israeli harvest dance called Shibleth Basade And finally we end with an American dance The south side shuffle which is set to the music of "I Love a Rainy Night" Because the US has been so active in the Middle East And the combination of those four conveys the message That countries which have been at war In many cases are still at war Can be brought together through their music and their dance At one time we did a different Arab dance with Shibleth Basade And we noticed that the steps of the Arab dance fit perfectly with the music of the Israeli dance Which is a reminder that a lot of wars happen between peoples of neighboring countries So it's not surprising that their music and dance should be similar Have any of you perceived any of our audiences reacting As if putting these dances from warring nations together was offensive Some people say right now if you're Palestinian you're suffering under the heel of Israelis Or you're Israelis who fear Palestinian bombers or whatever That it might be offensive to bring their music together One of the things that we have an advantage in that is that we are working pretty universally Friends groups, friends groups around the world, friends groups of many different flavors But all of them with an emphasis on that of God dwelling in everyone and an emphasis on peace So the basic assumption of our message certainly is not in any way strange or alien to the people that we're performing for So I guess the short answer is no we haven't run into those issues in terms of our performing groups I think if we did estophila before a mostly Muslim group Estophila is a Sufi Muslim dance with the words there is no God but God As refrain-being sung I think many Muslims would take quite exception to what we are doing Since Muslims, Bosuni and Shiite don't dance And of course to use the words Allah in that form they might find it extremely offensive I wouldn't want to be around to find out I'll toss in a comment here This is as Demi mentioned the 25th year we've been doing these tours And I'm one of the founders of this friendly folk dancer group that we're meeting with Currently we're in Cuba and that's where our tour has been this year But each year we go different places a couple years ago we were in Rwanda And at that point I said maybe there is a way we could do a Hutu and a Tutsi dance together Medley submalising there But I didn't have to say that I was too frightened to do it Both frightened I wouldn't be able to do dances well enough on their home turf But I was also afraid that some people might find it offensive So one thing here in Cuba but we've got a lot of tours a lot of experience with different countries As well as all over the United States taking into account Demi What you mentioned about Rwanda we also traveled in 1996 to Kenya And our message was very similar in Kenya Dancing the world together by dancing dances from various cultures that have been in conflict And it was the Kenyans themselves who immediately started seeing the possibility Suppose they said we started teaching our kids to learn a kukuyu dance and a luya dance And the dances of some of these different tribes would not help us to create a greater sense of unity And common purpose in Kenya So they took the structure of our format and started thinking about how they could apply that Through their schools through the way they use dance in their schools So I don't think it's such an alien idea at all You know for them to immediately recognize the possibilities that they could do with their dances Well interestingly I think this process of sort of warming up to our message And learning about us and getting more comfortable as we go along It's not surprising in a way that that happens because it's part of our ministry Of spreading the word and there's an interesting sort of parallel process That even as we are saying how dance helps melt the tensions of misunderstanding At the same time the people that we're connecting with are getting to know us And their comfort level is going up and they're seeing the kind of dances that we do So it's sort of a parallel process that we're sending a message of countries getting more familiar And at the same time our hosts are getting more familiar with us And then in the case of Cuba I would add another parallel process Which is the other hosts on the level of the state and the national government Also is getting more familiar with a group of Americans and what we're presenting here I think there's something very basic about what we do that is It's just human, it's just how humans are And that is that well sometimes we talk about it And that we say that we're very used to praying with our words, with our lips But that it's possible to pray with one's hands And it's also possible to pray with one's whole body through dancing, through one's work sometimes And I think that meeting someone on the level of the mind Is a very small section of what's possible in meeting someone It's when we meet someone with our hearts that transformation and connection can happen And our hearts are much more likely to be open, engaged, whatever you want to call it If we're not just thinking and talking If we're also working together, singing together, dancing together, playing together It's just what happens, things become, they go to a whole different level It makes lots of possibilities happen In preparing ourselves to do tours outside of the United States Outside of the kind of "safe" confines of the silent meeting tradition that we initially come from Or that we originally come from We said we're going to be traveling amongst more conservative, programmed friends Evangelical friends, friends who will do a lot more praying And are much more Bible-focused, much more Christ-centered And we had to come to our own acceptance of that And incorporation of that awareness in our message of love and our reaching out So in preparing ourselves, I think particularly to travel amongst African Quakers We really have expanded our own sense of what unites us as friends As the larger global friends community That I think has been born a lot of fruit As we've become more comfortable with that And we're able to travel and have been able to travel amongst more Theologically conservative groups of friends and discover all the parallels And all the connections that are there to be found That's been part of the richness I know for me And I think for those of us who've traveled now in some of the third world countries Where Quakerism is represented by a much more evangelical branch I think that's also been a similar part of our experience That said, coming to Cuba provides us with a really unique situation Where we are easy and comfortable with the local indigenous Quakers Who are more evangelical and come from that tradition And they comfortable with us because we speak their language In many ways and are not at all uneasy being participating in their services But here in Cuba there is a government which is nominally a very secular and atheist-oriented government With whom the local Cubans are attempting to work and build relationships And have been doing very well at it Our silent meeting tradition turns out to be I think a very good dimension That we bring to help build that bridge And I was actually reflecting on the fact that at the meeting that we were at on Tuesday The retired pastor there showed us a speech, a lecture that he delivered to unprogrammed Quakers In New England Yearly Meeting and it was about a bridge of love That was the title of it So here I am thinking about us as being part of the bridge between these secular Cuban government A strong focus on social justice and on peace Which is what we carry with us all the time And the local Cuban Quakers And so I think our background as silent meeting Quakers in the United States Who are more focused on peace and justice and less focused on theological Who are able nevertheless to be comfortable with And part of the local friends community has provided us a unique vehicle To then be a bridge between them and the more secular Cuban government We're just a natural because we talk about peace and social justice from the heart It's really who we are, but we talk about it as Quakers And the local Quakers can embrace us fully in that part of the larger Quaker family Aside from the religious aspects of this I think it's very important to just look at each other as people Many of us have been told lies, if you will, about people of other countries Communist countries, about people of different color And to get to know them as people and individuals And them to get to know us I think is a very important part of what we're doing Does anyone else care to make comment about any of the other medleys that we've performed These things that we use to demonstrate reaching across international boundaries One of the interesting things that I've observed here is that the Cubans love music and dance Everywhere we go on every street corner, there's music, there's dancing But there's never been a sense of using dance as a part of their religion They're part of their faith And what I've seen is that when we model this prayer for peace through dance All of a sudden the light goes on And they embrace that idea very, very quickly And get that concept of using music and dance for peace Sandra? A medley that we created for this particular tour is a combination of a dance from Peru called "Wino" and a dance from the United States called "Cotton-I-Joe" And it's an example of a medley that it doesn't highlight cultures that have been at war In conflict, but highlights the tensions between North America Particularly the United States and Latin America Where Latin America has been intervened on many times And kind of pushed around by some of the policies of the United States So we wanted to acknowledge through this suite of dances that we recognize that And that we recognize that every people should have the right to determine their own destiny To be able to control their own resources And to have their culture be what they want it to be We simply picked Peru because that was a dance that seemed accessible But it's really about all of the countries of Latin America You're listening to a visit with eight friendly folk dancers on site in Cuba from November of 2010 Mark and Sandra helps meet Pete and Lynn D'Angelo Rosemary Coffey, Barry Beale, Demi Miller, and Kathy Lip Far Our present for today's Spirit and Action program It is, of course, a Northern Spirit radio production I'm Mark Helps meet your host And NorthernSpiritRadio.org is our website Complete with the archives for the past six years Links to all our guests including the friendly folk dancers And a place for you to share your comments Right now, let's go back to an open room in Hibara, Cuba For a spirit and action visit with the friendly folk dancers We're speaking with a group of people here in Cuba But we're also talking about the wider experience of friendly folk dancer tours Doing this international ministry for peace through folk dance Some of the people in the room have been on just a couple tours There's some of us who have been on something up to 25 tours Anybody here care to comment about experience of particular note from previous tours? I have a more general comment about the experience of the friendly folk dancers I've been on many tours and been on tours in the United States To different regions of the US and also on foreign tours Tours happen once a year basically And in the time between tours I often sort of forget what tours are about And I find myself thinking well why do we do this? Friends in the US really know about geese The peace testimony is basic to Quakers And I might end up thinking well we're going to go to this other foreign culture And what is the peace testimony in modern US terms going to mean to them? It's like I forget the power of it and then the tour happens And magical things happen Like two meetings that have been for years and years and years Kind of estranged from each other Come to the same program and end up making plans to do things together Or people who have not seen each other for a long time Happen to come to the program and are happy to see each other Instead of unhappy to see each other I'm sure others can share many specific experiences But I've come to think over the years That it's a combination of our intention That we decide that we are going to go do this tour And we kind of place ourselves in God's hands In the hands of the Spirit And when we open ourselves like that And when we intend to be present to this ministry We don't really have to be in charge of it Because the combination of us is much bigger than each of us individually Of course right now we are in Cuba And because of our religious visa We are only allowed to stay in religious facilities Which in this case has met dorms in both Cabara and Hoggine We went to Rwanda, it was quite a different story Again we did stay for the most part in religious facilities However in one place while you were shuttled off to somebody's a larger house of a pastor Lynn and I were quartered in the school master's house Just in a spare room So we had a chance to see what an upper middle class Rwandan lives like And it was very interesting This was something that tourists don't see And that result was a great education Demi? I think part of what makes this tours special is That we go right to the congregations And we are invited into their community And for the largest part that means we stay in the homes of the people in the local congregations The travel is not done in the way that most tourists do We're moving basically from one church to another church And seeing the country or the culture Much more from the eyes of the local people who are our hosts In fact as Sandra has pointed out we are really dependent upon them in many ways And that creates a very very different sense of understanding the world Understanding our role in the global community We are ambassadors but we are ambassadors of the spirit And in part because we are so welcomed by them into their homes, into their lives Lynn? One of the things that I have felt on being on tour Is that we receive much more than we bring to these people Particularly in Rwanda it was a great privilege to learn about the reconciliation Forgiveness programs that they are leading there for peace It was also very special to meet the missionaries that are working there Particularly one woman who is trying to improve the nutrition of the people there This is Mark speaking Your host for spirit and action But also one of the members of the Francolic Dancers for the last 25 years One of the things that I'm stunned by regularly I was a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa 30 some years ago And so I knew about hospitality But it constantly blows my mind To go to places like Kenya or Rwanda The people who are considered the demographic say they are the poorest people in the world They are the people who have had the harshest conditions And their hospitality blows me away I think that what we do in the United States in spite of our riches Is insignificant in comparison to the deep well of generosity That they reach into in Rwanda or in Kenya or in Cuba They reach in even though they have got very little food or substance for themselves And they give entirely to them Demi? I think sometimes it's like a cross between the widows might and stone soup What little they have they share freely And it creates a sense of abundance for everyone Well following on what Demi said In addition to dance we find that on the tours there are other universal human experiences That come such as sharing food together Talking about one's family and one's children and one's relatives In every performance we see the little children come running out laughing They don't have the inhibitions and they leave the way into the joyful part of dance And make an example for the adults And we see these same things over and over again So we come with a mission of dance But we find that it creates an opening for all the universal experiences That we share together with the people we see In the communities that we visit And it enhances and grows more the sense of shared understanding I'm going to shift again and focus a little bit We are a group of Quakers Of course anybody could be doing this There's no reason that Methodists couldn't be going around doing it and so on Quakers have a particular religious basis or spiritual basis to what they do I imagine some people figure that this is since we describe this as a ministry That we're going around and quoting the Bible left and right And trying to convert people Anybody want to speak about what we're really doing on the spiritual level? Well it's been part of the Quaker tradition from the very beginning To reach deeply inward And connect with the inner teacher The inner guide, the inner message And Quakers have always used lots of different poetic images to describe the experience Of that inward presence What is important for me personally As I continue throughout my life to try and deepen this discipline Of hearing the voice inwardly Is that it allows us to experience a wide variety Of theologies and theological approaches And always to interpret it in terms of that The way the inner voice teaches us So we begin to understand and are comfortable in a very universal way With many other religious groups What it also means though is that we don't rely on doctrine We don't rely on set scriptures At least amongst our group But rather rely on how we are connecting with that Of the divine in everyone that we meet And it becomes much more easy to do it as we practice it So silent meeting Quakers tend to be much more focused on the practical Or the practice of listening to And responding to that of the divine in everybody And not focusing at all on any of the outward trappings Or the outward connections or the artifacts Or the books or the beliefs So that we do a lot of good outreach work We are very evangelical But it's much more about the process of how you connect With every person you meet With that spark of the divine that we know On faith is there in them Actually I find it very spiritually refreshing to dance in the Program churches whether it's in Rwanda Or here in Cuba Even though I can't necessarily understand these sermons I can still feel the spirit moving I know what the Cuban Quakers believe in Certainly that is an unknown with unprogrammed friends As Demi was saying The unprogrammed friends believe orthopraxi And the programmed friends believe orthodoxy I think that in many ways they are getting back to the roots of Quakerism Certainly George Fox, the famous line, said "Only Christ could speak to my condition" And reading in his autobiography That is certainly abundantly clear what he meant Something which I think has been lost to unprogrammed friends They have drifted away from the original source of energy And things are something that will cause you to quake That perhaps the programmed friends know Maybe we can learn from them Sandra? I think that when we visit with friends We'll have different traditions than we do We'll have the opportunity to experience our commonalities To recognize that while we might express them in different ways The things that we find compelling And that bring us to our Quaker faith Are the things in common In one way it's a recapitulation of a more personal level Of the message that we're bringing in the friendly folk dancer programs Kathy? I would add that we're asking the communities that we visit To stretch their imagination and open up to what for them Is a new way of thinking, a new way of worshiping And likewise, we also have to stretch and open up our concept Recognizing that people are living in very different circumstances And that Quaker is in fact very diverse So I think both sides are reaching toward the center And we find a wonderful place of common understanding That at the end of the performance is the predominating sense of the room Barry? It's been interesting to learn that the son of the two pastors here Hebarra is a conscientious objector to the Cuban military That's something I would have never expected But it's interesting to see his realization of the consequences For what he's done, the fact that he no longer can get work here in Cuba And how it's changed his life and how he struggles with that That's not something I would have expected to have found here One of the things that really came home to me in the course of the Rwanda trip Was that what brings us together as Quakers around the world Or as friends, which is the more common term Is not simply the peace testimony, of course that's part of it But the fact that we are all trying to do the same kind of work in the world So that even if the language is alien in the sense of the religious symbolism that's being used The fact that we all care about the poor, we care about the people in prison We care about the young men and sometimes women of our congregations Who need to decide whether or not to join the military These are issues that can bring us together In traveling outside of our comfortable, Anglo-speaking confines We start to have to immediately translate in terms of languages And learn new languages and it's a nice metaphor theologically as well I grew up in a conventional programmed Protestant tradition And I learned a lot of Bible verses and I learned a lot of Bible stories And then I freely chose to go on a path that took me in a roundabout way To the Quakers, to the silent meeting, Quakers, and what Pete refers to as The orthopractacy of the silent meeting Which was for me a step forward and away from a sense of orthodox C that binds us But I've really had a chance now to go back and look at all the wealth of things that I was given Growing up in a programmed tradition And I can see the same things happening for the young people growing up here And what good loving things are happening coming out of that tradition You know, I have no idea how many of them will stay on a path of orthodoxy But I do know the work we do in modeling the universality of the message of love And the understanding that whatever words they use, whatever The logical metaphors construct their using to express it that underneath We are speaking a common heart-to-heart language And that's why the dance and the music is so wonderful Because it transcends verbal languages immediately And it transcends ideology, certainly we're noticing that here Being the bridge between the secular Cuban government And the theologically oriented, biblically oriented Cuban Quakers in being able to say But to demonstrate, not to say, but say with our feet, with our message That you share a common concern for love of the poor and for a world in which there is no use of force In which people really do get along with each other, in which peace reigns So I'm delighted to be able to be led, you know, from my spiritual discipline To be that tool, to be the hands of the divine, the feet by which justice is moved forward, even in a small way Does anyone have any additional vignettes from previous tours, previous experiences that are part of doing this friendly folk dancer traveling across the world? I've just remembered another incident in Kenya that was interesting On that tour, we stayed in the homes of local families And at one time, my husband and I were the guests of a couple who were Pentecostals The woman had been brought up as a Quaker, and she worked at the Quaker School as an assistant to the headmistress But as she explained to me, when people of different faiths marry, the family tends to take on the faith of the husband, not of the wife So they had been Pentecostals all this time And after we got back home, we got a letter from the man saying that after our visit and the discussions that we had had, the family had decided to change their religion to Quakers And was there anything that we could send them about Quakers on the international scene for their further education? So we sent them a year's subscription to Friends Journal, which we hope was helpful, but we thought that was kind of an interesting and unintended, certainly outcome of our visit Have you got one, Sandra? When we were in New Zealand, one of the places where we gave our program was in a retirement home, a Quaker retirement home Most of the residents were not able to get up and dance in the way that we might usually do that So we did dances that were able to be carried out from being on your feet or being in a wheelchair or whatever And one of the things that we did was the hokey-pokey, which in New Zealand they call the hokey-cokey There was an elderly gentleman who had a cane, I believe, and he wasn't too sure that he could dance, but we encouraged him as we encouraged all of them, and he got up with his cane and did the hokey-cokey with us A couple of days later, when we went to the local meeting for worship on Sunday, the same gentleman showed up for worship And he got up and let everyone know that doing the hokey-cokey with the friendly folk dancers was a transformative experience Because now he didn't need his cane, and he told this long story and said, "Look, I'm without a cane, because I did the hokey-cokey" This was one of those wonderful, magical moments Demi I'm reminded of opportunities that come to us totally unexpected One of them was in Brussels when we were touring in Northern Europe A performance fell through that the last minute one of the local Quaker meetings could not host us There wasn't a space where something went wrong So another person realized that there was a refugee center, essentially they'd taken over an old army barracks with a drill field and everything To make it into a refugee center for North Africans coming into Brussels and the conditions were pretty severe for whole families with small children But at the very last minute they arranged for us to come on a Friday evening and do a performance in the gymnasium in this armory And we were so well received by everybody that they insisted that we come back And we spent the whole next day, a very hot day, I can recall in Brussels Working with the children from again North African through a number of translators to get it out, teaching the children dances And then doing an impromptu performance for them again and with some of the kids performing for each other And you know it's an opportunity like that that just comes along and we seize it And the kind of connection that we were able to make with people on a global scale was just so deeply moving One of the additional things that came out of that is I think the following day of the day after when we then traveled to the Netherlands Right at the border there was an old World War I fortress that they had built as part of the Maginot line And during the Nazi Anschluss it had been taken over and it had become a prisoner of war camp A German held prisoner of war camp in which political prisoners from Belgium were there And it was now a museum, a kind of solemn museum of the Holocaust and of the implications of the Third Reich And many people would go but it was a very solemn experience to go through And take the whole tour and understand on a more deeper level the horrors that the people had to go through The last room that we visited and one has to understand that this was built as an underground fortification And it was built with huge concrete bunkers and then completely buried in yards and yards of dirt And the thing that the prisoners, the political prisoners there had to do was to take the dirt all off the top of this structure And move it to a pile 200 yards away, that was their prison torture, their prison work So the last room in this facility was one of these vaulted chambers And they had transformed into a memorial for those who were killed in the various camps during the Third Reich, the final solution So in one room there were urns of ashes from every one of the other camps in Europe And there was one room with an eternal flame One of the dances that we had done and have done is a memorial to Fallen Dead It's a dance leech cocolo from Yugoslavia And so we were moved in the echoing vaulted chamber around this flame, this eternal flame To suddenly spontaneously dance leech cocolo, it's a singing dance And it was just another moving experience that would not have happened Had we not had the opportunity right there in the moment because of this I'll toss in one of my experiences, back in 1992 The friendly folk dancer to a group I was with was traveling across Pennsylvania At one point we were scheduled in a community center, the Quaker meeting was sponsoring us But it was in a community center, we got there and there was another group Which was not on the schedule but had weekly been using the community center for martial arts And the leader had shown up there and he very graciously said Well you've got your thing and we're not officially on the schedule So it's fine for you to do that but we'll stay And he had this whole troupe of young males from maybe 20 down to 10 or 12 years old They stayed and took part in our peace program, now this is a martial arts The leader of this group was an amazing spiritual presence And he lit up and what he shared with us finally, he said I think maybe now I found what I'm called to He's loved the intensity, the focus of martial arts But he needed that additional spark of spirituality So our introducing these dances to him, the movement He felt was the perfect dove-tailing of what he was called to It's just amazing even in the most common of places to run into a transformative experience We've just got a minute or two left I'm wondering if some of you care to comment what you do in your outside lives When you're not costumed friendly folk dancer How does this dovetail with your peace witness that you do when you're part of a friendly folk dancer tour? Kathy? In my daily life I am a school social worker in the Hispanic community And I would say for this tour definitely my work resonates very much with our experience on the tour Because another one of the great universal things is the love of every parent toward their child And the concern that they learn and grow and learn in school So that they can move toward adulthood with preparation for work and for being an adult So I find the possibility of a very similar sense of connection, of universal understanding Opening up toward a common purpose, in that sense I have really enjoyed seeing the similar connections with dance And even some possibilities of transferring the familiarity that I've been lucky to have Here in Cuba with our work with dance My two main interests outside of working for a living are music and dance And computers and technology and so I had the opportunity to combine those interests in several ways Doing websites for friendly folk dancers and for a school for disabled children in Zimbabwe And it's just really fascinating to me to see how the internet has changed people's lives Even here in Cuba that even though we have very limited access to internet It certainly has helped us communicate both with our families back home And to get some practical work done also One of the ways that we close our program is to do a dance and song called "The Bills of Peace" And we do it in a round with three circles And the inner circle represents our family, ourselves, and then we go to our community and our world Both Pete and I are retired and we like to travel We also do a lot of folk dancing And we're very involved with our family And hopefully bringing peace to ourselves and to those around us in the way that we live on a day-to-day basis And Sandra? I think it was Kathy some years ago that shared with us something that she had learned, that was in Thailand Go to something like this, a peaceful heart creates a peaceful person A peaceful person creates a peaceful family and so on So in my everyday life I work on the level of the peaceful heart, peaceful person In that I work part-time as a psychotherapist and part-time teaching yoga and doing yoga therapy So those two disciplines trying to help people find peace inside themselves are, I guess, nurtured I draw on the well of my Quaker experience with the friendly folk dancers and other Quaker settings To help uphold me as I do that work Pete, as Lynn was saying, we are both retired and we dance usually four nights a week But I think dancing with the friendly folk dancers is a rather unique way of using our dance skills I think it helps expand us and focus us more Any last comments before we sign off? Well yes, I just wanted to observe that just as our ministry here seeks to build a sense of common understanding I'm very aware that in the build-up to military intervention there is a counterpart to that, which is the opposite process And that is a rather systematic training of distancing those who are called upon to fight and to be in combat Go through a process of pulling away from society and entering a hierarchy in which people above them are making decisions And they are encouraged to be very systematically in sync with the military process And so as part of that they move away from society and they move away from that personal face-to-face contact With the people of the country that they're going to fight against I think that is very relevant to our work because we're seeking to do the opposite We're seeking to see the humanity in all people We don't seek to distance ourselves or fragment ourselves or break off from the other people But rather quite the opposite to get closer to see their humanity And when we do that it becomes impossible to engage in war Very well said Cathy I want to thank all of you for being part of the tour of course But especially for joining me today for Spirit and Action Today Spirit and Action guests have been eight members of the Quaker Folk Dance group known as the Friendly Folk Dancers On tour last November in Cuba Find more about them at friendlyfolkdancers.org And we'll see you next week for Spirit and Action The theme music for this program is Turning of the World performed by Sarah Thompson This Spirit and Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website NorthernSpiritRadio.org Thank you for listening I am your host Marc Helpsmeet and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light This is Spirit in Action With every voice, with every song We will move this world along With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing