Dear friends,

Madrigals describe the month of May as 'merry'.  Whatever happened to the maypole?  I shall probably be flooded with comments from people about how they still spend every first of May merrily dancing round the maypole on a village green somewhere, but my recent experience is that there's not much of that sort of activity about.

I remember from my days at primary school how we would practice for the big event, the maypole dance at the school fete.  Holding a brightly coloured ribbon and encouraged by some toe-tapping, enchanting music we would weave in and out of each other until the ribbons got shorter and the central pole was a beautiful and highly colourful decorated thing.  Of course, after the challenge of creating the coloured pole without knocking anyone over or fastening them to the pole with some accidental (?) wrong manoeuvre, the real challenge was doing the whole thing in reverse, ending up where you started with all the ribbons separated. 

Sometimes... it worked.  More often than not though we would end up as a completely entangled mass of ribbons and children, which the unfortunate teacher would then have to spend ages undoing.  Happy days!

In a hymn by Sydney Carter there is the line in the refrain that says, Dance then wherever you may be, I am the Lord of the dance, said he. Have you ever wondered what sort of dance it was?  I guess there are possible several answers and among them surely there must be the maypole dance. 

I rather like the idea of the maypole dance being a symbol of ecumenical activity, indeed for life in general.  Whoever we are, whichever direction we are moving in, what we have in common is what is at the centre.  Indeed the dance cannot happen without the central focus that holds everything together and makes sense of all our activity.  If God is in the centre of our living together, if Christ is at the centre of all we hope to achieve as his Church, then the dance will happen and we shall interact and interweave as God intends us to. 

We shall also find, as we take part in the dance, that getting closer to each other and getting closer to the centre are related.  Whatever the colour of the ribbon you are holding, if one end is attached to the centre and the other end is securely in your hands, then there's a good chance that together we can create something of beauty.

Perhaps that was in the mind of Christ when he said, "Inasmuch as you have done something for the least of these you have done it for me."  Happy dancing!

Best wishes to you all.