Since the turn of the millennium, I’ve participated in the Sufi-inspired Dances of Universal Peace, both in the mountainous west, when I lived in Jackson, Wyoming, and since 2003 in the midwest, attending weekend events in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio. I plan to continue. These dances feed my soul.
(Google “Dances of Universal Peace and Exopermaculture”: first page notes ten posts on my experiences during specific DUP weekends.)
For the past few years, my brother Mark, a composer and musician, has also participated in the Dances. He has now trained as a fully fledged dance leader, both leading dances and composing new dances in the northwest, where he lives. As he told me not long ago, “Finally I’ve found my spiritual family.” Agreed.
And who is not included? The Dances speak to everyone, draw in every person whose longing for union is palpable, whose heart is opening to the divine.
I thank my Sufi mentor and international dance leader Darvesha who called my attention to this 50th anniversary video. It features a single, simple, classic DUP dance, originated by our founder “Sufi Sam” in the late ’60s, and expressed through circling, hand-holding human beings, in differing tempos, with differing instrumentation, and differing size groups; each person, and each group — so very individual, authentic, and loving! — in countless locations, inside and outside, all over the world.
