Does God Dance?

“Dance, dance wherever you may be.

I am the Lord of the Dance,” said He.

Traditional Irish Hymn

“I would believe only in a god who could dance.”

Frederick Nietzsche.

In the night of Brahman (the ultimate reality, the inner essence of all things, infinite and incomprehensible), nature is inert, and cannot dance till Shiva wills it. He rises from His rapture and, dancing, sends through inert matter pulsing waves of awakening sound, and lo! matter also dances, appearing as a glory round about Him.

Dancing on the Earth, Johanna Leseho, Sandra McMaster. Findhorn Press, 2011

Three Short Dance Stories

150 firefighters arrive from Johannesburg at YEG (Edmonton International Airport), here to assist in combatting the most extreme fire season in our history. (Isn’t all weather extreme these days?). They deboard the plane singing in harmony and dancing in unison. This is how they fight fires in South Africa, apparently. 

My good friend Robert, Operator of the Naked Cafe where we dance every week, just got back from visiting his friends in Kenya. While there, a friend of the community died. The funeral included 3 hours of non-stop singing and dancing!

A beloved member of our tight-knit Tango community graces us with her final visit to the cafe, her bald head decorated with a bandana. For the next month, while she continues to fight her losing battle with cancer, the rest of us dance wearing bandanas in solidarity. 

Everything goes better with dance. Even death.

The Dancing Universe

String theory fascinates me (not that I understand much). This latest incarnation of astrophysics reads far more like myth and mysticism than science. As the theory goes (in its various forms), the universe is at its most basic level, fashioned from little bits (teeny-weeny-weeny!!!) of string!  When they vibrate they create something like sound waves and musical tones, which manifest as energy and matter. 

The universe, in all its forms, is just an ever-evolving symphony. Instead of the Big Bang (such a crude, unimaginative, vulgar, violent image!), we have something more like the opening bars of Beethoven’s 5th, an exquisite chord progression that spills over into innumerable eminations. A symphony!

Reality is resonance, vibration, music. Music and motion are an alignment with and natural expression of the cosmic order. You and I are birthed from the percussive striking of the sound board of a grand-grand-grand piano.

Dance then is a form of worship, an embodied prayer, a self-emptying surrender to the eternity of the moment, a deep bow to the bewildering grandeur of what is.

We are all participants in this dance.  We are all dancers. We are all moving in response to the primal thrumming of the universe, the vibration of strings. 

A Dancing God

“Dance is God on the move. … To dance is to let God move through us, reanimate us no matter what death-dealers are after us, the perichoresis that began before everything, the music of the spheres that will play on long after we are gone.” Molly Baskette, blog post.

And we have the creative freedom, even responsibility, to infuse every moment with our dance.

The miraculous piece is that our participation in this dance changes the world around us, whether we build up or tear down, whether we fashion beauty or deface it, whether we sow harmony or discord. 

Every time we choose what is beautiful, every time we listen to the birds sing, plant a seed, smile at our reflection in the mirror, cough up a prayer, hold a hand, we are adding to the good. We are serving the world. We are dancing.

When we surrender our bodies to the rhythm of the music and allow ourselves to be folded into the arms of the Beloved, what special souls we are!

We have dared to dance into the heart of the Divine.