The Divine Dance

 

Last night Bill was away, the kids were with their Dad, and I was uncharacteristically alone. So I danced. Our home is in the woods overlooking a marsh. At sunset I cued up the Itunes, plugged in the earphones, and danced in the dark with the trees, the cattails, and the sky. Pagan as it may sound it was, rather, a release and reverence for God’s good creation. Music as flow. Embodying Spirit. Dance allows us a means to express the Holy Spirit. I felt the Spirit; I stomped on the ground; I lifted my hands to the stars; I hugged the trees; I experienced the Divine. I believe dance to be a way to know God as profoundly as prayer and meditation.

In John 3:16 “God so love the world that he gave his only son” to enter into the creation, becoming flesh and blood. If God can create it, and enter into it, there is something to be celebrated in being physical. Through it we can know the Divine. There is a harmony to moving with music, with spirit, so that our body and essence are living outside of our binary brains. We are beyond the rational and into flow.

There is an apocryphal story, which even if it isn’t true should be, that when Native American medicine men talk to the sick, they usually ask three questions: When was the last time you sang? When was the last time you danced? When was the last time you told your story? Living in the flow is part of what it means to be a healthy human. It is joy.

We can experience this flow, this harmony, not only in dance, but in singing, art, or in playing an instrument. God gives us these means of alignment with the Divine as practice for how all our lives are to be lived: in harmony with the physical world, the Spirit, and each other. This harmony, this expression of self beyond self and in synchronicity with the Spirit, can be realized in any activity.

I have often experienced this communally in worship. There are some Sundays when the service is greater than the sum of its parts. The people, the prayers, the music, the words, the poetry, the laughter, the spirit, the energy swirl and combine to create something breathtaking. God is not found in some pallid other-world, but right here, right now, embodied, in this gift of our physical selves (God will be in the next world too, and it will be brilliant!). But to deny this existence is blasphemous! Dance! Sing! Jump for joy! Walk in the woods! Bask in the Spirit in attentive silence! And in all ways connect with the flow which will guide you and your body in the divine dance.