Do you like dancing -
perhaps at weddings? Or do you like watching Strictly Come Dancing or Dancing
on Ice? Or what about ballet? Even the presenter of BBC Radio’s culture
programme admitted on air that he had never understood ballet or even been to
the ballet.
Someone called
Richard Rohr, who writes a blog about Christian contemplation, says that God
doesn’t just enjoy dancing, God isn’t just one of the dancers in the dance of
creation, God is the dance itself. [1]
Think about the
building blocks of life and the universe. They’re all made up of smaller
particles or life forms bound together or moving around one another.
In the atom there’s a
lot of hugging and dancing going on. Protons and neutrons hold each other
tightly in the nucleus of the atom while electrons dance around them, although
I think it’s a bit more complicated than that.
And in the tiny cells
that make up all living things there’s an ancient life form hiding, called
mitochondria, which you can see dancing around inside the cell giving it
energy. The mitochondria are constantly bonding and separating too as they
dance around inside the cell. They have what’s called a symbiotic relationship
with the creatures they inhabit. We can’t live without them, and the energy
they help us to burn, but they can’t exist without us.
And on a much bigger
scale, the moon orbits the earth, with its waxing and waning face, in a
constant dance of high tides and low tides. And on an even larger scale still,
the planets orbit the sun and stars dance around one another in galaxies,
sometimes with slender arms spiralling out into deep space.
So is it any wonder
that people and animals, birds and fish, move and swirl in complicated patterns
too - shoals, flocks, herds, packs, social groups and families, children in
music and movement classes, all dancing and sometimes tip-toeing around one
another?
And God is the dance
itself. There is a famous painting, Rublev’s
icon, that is supposed to
show God the Creator, Jesus and the Holy Spirit being a family together -
having breakfast, if you like, around the family dining table.
In fact they still
look a little bit groggy. Or are they just thinking deep thoughts? They all
look very similar, like brothers or sisters. They have everything in common,
they’re bonded together like a truly loving family, and yet they’re also
distinct from one another, a little bit different, with different roles to play
in the dance.
And God wants us to
join in the dance, to dance with one another and with him. And it doesn’t
matter if we’re notorious Dad dancers, or we have two left feet. We are all
invited to get on the dance floor!
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