THE NEED TO DANCE

During the past week, I have been re-reading Richard Rohr’s book "The Divine dance.” This must be my third time reading it, and as often happens, I am finding in it important helps that I had not seen before.

The main thesis of the book is that the center of our faith is the mystery of the Holy Trinity. Contrary to what we in the Western World have been traditionally taught, God is not some lone Being observing the world from a distance, but rather God is a Trinity, God is the relationship of three persons - or as Saint John puts it, "God is love."

This triune God invites each of us to join in the eternal dance of love that exists between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We are a part of that divine dance. And, a more shocking way of putting it, the dance is in us, just as God dwells in each of us.

I have been meditating on this image for a week now, and it has been really helpful in moving Myself out of the center of my spiritual life, and inviting me instead to abandon myself and join in this circle dance, the Divine Dance of Father, Son, and Spirit.

This metaphor makes so much more sense than the image of a Lonesome God sitting on top of a mountain, detached from all of creation. The circle dance includes every created being, from electrons dancing around the nuclei of atoms, to mosquitoes and camels, and planets circling around their suns.

Rohr points out how modern astronomy and physics keep discovering that everything exists in relationship to other things - subatomic particles orbit being attracted and repelled by each other, etc., and certainly planets and stars and black holes and galaxies all show the same circular pattern. 

The latest insight that the book has given me is to correct my image of the Dance:  All of us creatures who are dancing in the Circle are imperfect by definition, and so each of us keeps making missteps. God provides the Perfection, we just have to provide the Love as we stumble through the steps with our equally imperfect sisters and brothers.

I imagine that at the end of time we'll all be dancing in perfect sync with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. But until that Day we will all keep dancing in hope, forgving all those imperfect steps -- our own  and our neighbors'.

I highly recommend Father Rohr’s “The Divine Dance,” especially if you are prepared to completely shift your thinking about your relationship with God, with others, and with all of creation!