Shall We Dance?

(No doubt this blog entry would be considered heretical by some in my church today and by many a mere generation ago when dancing was considered a grave sin by the church leadership.)

Consider the relationship of the Father and the Son in John 14:8-24. Specifically consider the interrelationship between the Father and the Son:

Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. (John 14:0-11)

The theological term for this interrelationship is perichoresis. Wikipedia describes this as "the mutual inter-penetration and indwelling within the threefold nature of the Trinity, God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit." The word comes from two Greek words, "peri" (around) and "chorea" (dance)--literally, "to dance around."

Hey, I don't just make this stuff up! Consider the following poems:

Perichoresis, or, I am Lord of the Dance
(from http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/archive/index.php/t-27144.html)

Peri - around
Chorea - dance, cf Choreography
Perichorea - To dance around...

Perichoresis is the Divine Dance. The Divine Dance of the persons of the Trinity.

In the beginning was the Dance, and the Dance was in God, and the Dance was God...

An eternal Dance; the three persons of the Godhead dancing eternally, in an embrace of love, mutually giving and receiving. Always dancing.

In the beginning God created a Dancing partner...

The world was created in its own dance, and invited to join the Dance. But the lead dancers said No! and started their own dance. The hands of God are extended to restore the Dance, and inviting us to Dance: The Son, and the Spirit, the two hands of God. The Dance for us has a beginning, and an end, and they are not the same. The beginning starts with anticipation, expectation, and desire; the end concludes with satisfaction, completion, and rest - until the next Dance.

We look upon the Dance of God, as he ever circles about us. We try to understand. We so often fail. The Dance goes on, and the part we have in the Dance goes on, though we are not Dancing, only dancing, yet that dancing seems to be incorprated despite our best efforts. We look, and the Dance seems to change, to reverse, to go back on itself - it repented the Lord that... - and then the Dance goes on, seeking it's goal, never seeking return to the starting point - I the Lord change not. This is the nature of Dance: round and round you go, sometimes to and sometimes fro, but the Dance goes on.

And us? Some of us sit as wallflowers. We won't dance under any circumstances. Some of us are dancing around our handbags in our own dance, while the Dance wheels about us. We dance on our own. But dances are communal, not individual, everyone knows that. Dances are free, though structured: God's Line Dancing.

Will you join the Dance? God's two hands, The Son and Spirit, await you, pull you, invite you, to take you into the Dance, to wheel you about, make you dizzy at times, exhilerated at times, exhausted at times, fearful at times. But it is The Dance.

I am the Lord of the Dance said he...

How does this poem enlightenn you and inform your understanding of Creation and the Fall?

How does this poem affect your understanding of John 14:15: "If you love me, you will obey what I command."?

Perichoresis
(Copyright © 2004 by Andrew Stephen Damick)

O elegant and gentle Leader of the dance,
we do not know the meaning of each step
nor how to rightly turn this way or hold this pose.
Each spinning step or angled movement's twist
does sometimes give us vertigo here where we stand;
this mystery of how the rhythm's pulse
and how the music's lilt are tuned to only You
has caught us up, and we are overwhelmed.

O grace-filled, grace-bestowing Leader of the dance,
please teach me how to twirl and how to move;
please teach me how the song pervades each dancer's form,
these dancers who have learned to dance with You
throughout the ages of the song, the holy song
You sang in ages past to Abraham,
to Isaac and to Jacob and his Hebrew seed:
Now sing to me and give me, too, this life.

O Leader of the dance, this perfect partnership
of Leader and of led, of God and man,
this Incarnation's holy dance we see in You,
You now invite us to accompany.
This awesome dance, a truly cosmic synergy,
the interpenetration of us men
with Deity -- with Trinity! -- the universe
beholds and stands amazed and bows its head.

O holy Leader of this cosmic circling dance,
the union of both man and God is here
and imaged in the holy mystery of life
conjoined, a woman and a man conjoined.
He takes Your role as gentle leader, she as Church,
she follows him, and he must die for her;
their dance together joins the dance eternal now,
and in that human dance we see our God.

O Holy Trinity, Your dance eternal now
descends on us and consecrates our own,
the revelation here as Body and as Blood;
herein we taste the God become a man,
and men become as gods as David prophesied.
The Trinitarian rhythm has become
our own, to guide our dance, to grasp our hands and lead
us in the dance of stillness perfectly.

How does this poem enlighten you and inform your understanding of submission?

How does this poem affect your understanding of John 14:20: "On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you."?

Once upon a time, my wife, Kathy, thought it would be fun to sign us up for ballroom dancing class. On the surface, it seemed like a good idea--I can think of few things that sound more exciting, more senuous, than doing the tango with Kathy.

The classes were an unmitigated disaster. While I am not the most coordinated person in the world, I don't have two left feet. Nevertheless, Kathy and I fought the whole time, because Kathy refused to follow my lead. Now I am not so macho that I need to be in charge all the time, but the dances are designed for one person to lead and the other to follow. When I tried to lead, and Kathy resisted, tugging me in other directions. "No," she said, "I don't want to lead. You are the man--you lead, just do it the right way!" (We ended up soon after that dropping the class, and doing the tango with Kathy remains one of my unfulfilled fantasies.)

Sanctification, according to A.B. Simpson, is about obedience. Obedience is a hard concept for many of us to accept, but I ask you to look at submission and obedience as dancing with God and learning to follow God's lead, even when (especially when!) you question whether he is "doing it the right way!"

Kathy and I watch "Dancing with the Stars" from time to time, and she has commented that the female celebrities dancing with the male professional dancers have an easier time than the male female professionals have with the male celebrities. "Those female stars just have to let the male professionals lead them, but the female professionals have to trust the male celebrities to get it right!" she says. In your dance with God, I trust you to realize that God is "the professional" and you can trust in him to get it right.