Saturday morning my husband and I were in the kitchen reviewing videos and gathering supplies for a fundraising event we were hosting in the afternoon at a community library. We would be celebrating what our national non-profit Body Wisdom Inc, calls the International Day of InterPlay. We would connect through Zoom with a member of our troupe who is teaching the singing, dancing, story-telling tools of InterPlay to native children in Alaska. We would give a Spirit of InterPlay award to the Legacy Arts Group, a Pittsburgh non-profit that teaches African dancing and drumming to African- American people, connecting them to their heritage. Our day was to be about connection, celebration, and community.
A phone call from my brother-in-law who lives in DC interrupted us. “Are you ok?” he asked, sending us to the television to learn of the shocking massacre of Jewish people as they worshipped at the Tree of Life Synagogue a few miles from our home. We began telephoning Jewish friends and colleagues inquiring, “Are you ok?”
“My children and I had our Bar and Bat Mitzvahs there,” my husband’s golf buddy told him. Roz, a member of our local InterPlay community was a member of that synagogue. The previous night, along with several other members of our group, she was there to celebrate her 70th birthday. She answered my call from her car on her way to Morgantown. “We just heard about it on the radio,” she said, “and we’re having trouble getting details,”
This process continued throughout the morning and early afternoon, hearing from out of town folks through text and phone and reaching out to friends in Pittsburgh. Then as most everyone else in Pittsburgh, and in communities around the country have had to do when these horrific shooting occur, we had to decide – do we carry on with our plans for the afternoon to assert that evil does not win out, or do we cancel out of respect for the deceased. While recognizing that most of the guests who had planned to attend would likely not show, we elected to go forward.
Gathering together at the library with people in the InterPlay community, and our honored guests, we danced on behalf of those that lost their lives and those who must go on without them. We danced on behalf of our community that we may release our bodies’ responses to the atrocities committed against our community that day. So that, instead of keeping the atrocities alive in us, we may be free to express and live fully with love and vitality.
Are we ok? One thing that has been said about almost all of the perpetrators of mass shootings in these last few years, including this one, is that they are loners without community. We left the gathering filled with gratitude that we have each other, and confidence that that’s how we will get through this challenge, and whatever comes after that.
Sheila
