At first, they hold the tether in their hands so it won't pull on the peg. Eventually, though, each dancer lets go of his tether and leans back, his full body weight pulling on the skin that holds the peg. The searing pain is his contribution to this ritual of community renewal. Only when the skin finally tears is he released from his mystic connection with the tree. I am still trying to come to terms with the relation between the sufferings of the Sun Dance and of Holy Week, and with the gradual awareness that some of my deepest moments of spiritual enlightenment have come when I was part of a community that felt itself called to embrace suffering and act in solidarity with those who suffer.
Death has no sting.
Easter is the center of our faith, not Good Friday. And I begin to see how my early religious upbringing and my privileged class status interlock into a seamless denial that pain and suffering belong in the lives of believers. From the time of the Pilgrims, this promise of prosperity has also pervaded U.S. secular life. The failure of Eastern Communism and the spurious linking of it with all communitarian ways of organizing societies only underscores the triumphalism of radical Western capitalism. Surely we will not suffer.