AtQ - What Are You Responding To?

Exploring Powerful Questions

In this week’s Talking Note, I explored the idea that ecstatic dancing like free jazz is a practice that attempts to break free from form. Ideas like this often gain popularity when the forms we have come up through are seen to be impositional or oppressive. The extreme position to take is that any form is oppressive and therefore must be dismantled. There is another way.

When thinking about the forms I have adapted my life around, the craft of tap dancing, the person of Jesus Christ, it is not the lack of form but what is working in the form that makes the difference. Instead of moving from form to formless, we move from imposition to love. The dance transforms. The relationship to reality, the world, and relationships in general transforms.

To experience this kind of transformation it may be necessary to explore our current formation. This week’s question helps us do that.

What are you responding to?

Spontaneous action is a mark of our formation. What comes out of us is a mark of what is working in us. Therefore, asking a question about what might be causing a particular action can lead us to see some of the unseen inner landscape of our being. Here are some specific examples: