Dancing in the Flow of God
Dancing is a performance art. While we can certainly dance in the privacy of our homes, dance is intended to be communal. Sometimes professionals glide across a stage before an audience captivated by the beauty of their movement. Other times, a room pulses with music and every-body moves in synchronicity. In every setting, the movement of dance generates energy and life bubbles up, flowing through both the dancers and the audience.
COVID changed all that. The pandemic shut down dance clubs and dance performances – like everything else. In this YouTube video, Ani Taj, a dancer, shares her early realization about the impact of COVID. For her, it wasn’t just about making a living. It was about living. She said, “The thing I treat as very ordinary and part of healing and laughing and socializing, and like, really key to my thriving, is not going to be available.”
For her, dancing was key to her well-being so she had to find an outlet. She created an online dance platform called “Social DisDance Party” where people log in and dance together . Similar to a Zoom meeting, everyone was in their own box and yet sharing the same space.
She was not alone. Online dance parties sprung up, sometimes hosted by professionals and often by individuals. New music mixes were created and circulated as dancers around the world found new ways to dance alone and yet together.
The similarities between online dance parties and online worship are striking. When COVID shut down worship, many church goers came to understand the importance of weekly worship in their lives. Yes, worshipers missed their friends, but like Ani, many also sensed that something deeper was missing. Disrupting the weekly rhythm of worship broke the life-giving motion that most folks didn’t necessarily realize needed. The movement of the Spirit in worship does not just feel good, it actually nourishes life.
We sense the Spirit’s movement when we are together in worship. We also sense it when we are together with God in nature or in prayer. We sense the movement when we are with friends or when we share special moments with strangers.
Theologians consider this healing movement to be part of the nature of God. They use a Greek word, “perichoresis” (parry core re sis) to describe the flow or movement of love within the Trinity (Father, Son and Spirit). It also describes the perfect union of the divine and human aspects present with Jesus. This flow of love and the natural harmony within the Trinity expands to fill the world with the very same Holy love.
Holy love is not a warm fuzzy feeling of affection. Holy love in this case is an energy. It is the movement and power behind the origin of the universe and life itself. In the same way that light is both a particle and a wave, love is a feeling and a force. The force of love as a continuous sharing or outpouring creates energy. This energy continues to be the source of all life flowing through communities wherever two or three are gathered.
Spirituality is the lived experience of this flow of love. But the flow doesn’t simply come into us, it also flows through and out from us. Our acts of love, compassion, service, and justice in the world are the natural outflow of God’s love. In this way, spirituality is not a private quest for self-actualization or a means of pleasing God with our personal piety. Rather it is about plugging into the very nature of God and joining the flow of all creation.
