Lessons from Dance lessons

[A reader submitted Word for this week’s reflection- DANCE]

“To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. This is power, it is glory on earth and it is yours for the taking” ― Agnes De Mille

At our 2010 wedding, only a few lessons.

My husband and I are taking dance lessons. He gave them to me as a gift, and we have kept it up as an opportunity to learn something new together. Talk about challenge.  It is an awesome challenge as we learn to Rumba, Foxtrot, Swing and Hustle.

First, I did not know my body could move some of the ways these dances require. Second, it is really about partnership. We joke about me letting my husband lead. He does, and I let him. He hopes it will rub off through the rest of our life. Three, both of us need to remember not to spend time beating oneself up, just stay flexible and in the fun.

“Dancing is a vertical expression of a horizontal desire” ― Robert Frost (Yes, the poet Robert Frost)

Working together we keep each other going, learning and growing. (I wish I could say that it has shrunk us too, but that is not the case yet.) And still earl-ish in our life together, it helps build our bodily connection and chemistry (in public).

Besides a great date night connection and immense fun, dancing is teaching us about each other for our marriage. Ballroom dance is an art form of the twosome. We learn a true give and take. It is about building trust, teamwork and chemistry.  And it has a lot of fun twists and turns too.

                “Dance is the hidden language of the soul.”  Martha Graham

Another lesson I have taken from dance is that it is much like faith – a commitment to trust, giving and receiving, leading and following. You must be present and breathe. And you do feel alive. The Robert Frost quote aside, I do not fathom why dance has such a bad stigma in the world of faith. (Think “Footloose”)  In the Bible King David dances.  Nature dances and claps its hands in the Psalms. When filled with the Spirit, how can we keep from singing, or dancing?!

“You have turned my mourning into joyful dancing.
    You have taken away my clothes of mourning and clothed me with

joy,
My soul must sing and not be silent, O God, and I will praise you forever!” Psalm 30:11-12 (NIV)

 We don’t look down on dancing in our church, but we do overlook it. Although occasionally you can catch my pastor moving to the music, sometimes off beat. Dancing is an outward expression of our inward experience. People filled with faith exude joy and thankfulness. These are people magnify the Spirit of life! We dance because we are loved. We work in trust and partnership because we are forgiven. We flow together with graceful movements. My prayer is that the Church never stifles this sense of God’s Spirit and Song. I pray we are swayed by the Spirit and continue the sacred celebration .

“You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive.”  ― Merce Cunningham

 “Dancing is what you do when you arrive at where God wants you to be.”  Leonard Sweet

(Len is one of my favorite theologians. His statement here feels so true for my life today.)

KEEP DANCING!  Don't stop, even if the music does. Let the joy inside take over.

Keeping our Knees Bent

 

 

Today’s word…… FLExiBiliTy.  It is about adapting or changing as circumstances require. I have discovered that some people are better at this than other people.  Sometimes I am better at this than others.  Recently, my re-engagement in the practice of yoga reminded me how it hurts to be inflexible.  When I am rigid and unbendable, I seem to get hurt and broken the most - in body, mind or spirit. It is better to go with the flow and be flexible.

“If you don’t know what you want, you’ll seldom get it. But, no matter how well you plan, you will fare better if you expect the unexpected. The unexpected, by nature, comes unseen, unthought, unenvisioned. All you can do is plan to go unplanned, prepare to be unprepared, make going with the flow part of your agenda, for the most successful among us envision, plan, and prepare, but cast all aside as needed, while those who are unable to go with the flow often suffer, if they survive.”

― David W. Jones, Moses and Mickey Mouse: How to Find Holy Ground in the Magic Kingdom and Other Unusual Places

Many cannot “go with the flow.” It seems too unpredictable. Some prefer a bad known, then the possibility of a better unknown. Many of us hate change. Like the old Hershey Bar commercial….”Change is bad…..Hershey bar the same for a zillion years….”  Change is not bad, it is essential to humankind and the whole earth. The nature of life is to evolve. Seasons come and go. Children grow up and out. Jobs come and then we retire. Technology zips in and out at warp speed. Favorite shows, baseball games, springtime romances and people end. If we are not flexible we get run over and mowed down, or at the least, left behind. Flexibility helps us, as the old song goes, “to roll with the changes.”

When I was a little league baseball outfielder, one of the most helpful things I learned for the sport and life was to keep my knees bent. This allowed me to move in whatever direction the action taking place in.

"Blessed are the flexible for they shall not be broken." Geri Laeder and many others (Thanks Jeff)

In general, when I look in the rear view mirror of life, I realize that most of the good things in my life are the results of change and a willing and flexible spirit.  Life is not stagnant. It keeps moving on with or without us. I do know – through faith – that I am not alone in the changes. I trust there is a way the changes will fit together for good (whether I see it now or not.)

“For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you,   plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11

I have moved many times, have had a couple career changes, and had a number of hairstyles. Not all of it has been easy, but I have grown and learned a lot. The biggest change in my life occurred a few years ago when I got married. This change brought love, peace, joy, and comfort into my life. As a result, a new me was born—a wife and happy woman.

Today I sit on the verge of big and small change, and am contemplating my abilities to bend and move with it all.  I am both excited and terrified, and trying to lean into it.  From past experience of change, I know that flexibility and movement are good and important. Breathing in the spirit of life, holds back fear.

I am trying to keep my knees bent in all manners of speaking…..

-          to be able to move quickly in whatever direction God wants me to move

-          to get down on them to pray in whatever circumstances I find myself

-          to not cut off my air flow and faint (ask any groom who locked his knees!)

-          to keep the options open

Things that help my flexibility –

Praying                                                  Breathing deeply                                                Observing creation

Laughing,                                              Hugging or loving someone                             Dancing

Petting a soft cuddly animal            Drawing or rather, coloring                             Gardening

“Men are born soft and supple; dead they are stiff and hard... Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible

 is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life.”  Tao Te Ching

 

Be a disciple of life. Keep those knees bent!