Square Dancing
Growing up in Colorado, I was taught to square dance in Elementary School. This was a requirement for all elementary school students because square dancing was as part of our cultural heritage and a great way to enhance our physical education.
All I knew is that it was a lot of fun.
Boys and girls were paired off and placed in lines. Music played while the announcer called out each step. We Allemande Left and right, Do-sa-doed and promenaded across the floor until the bell rang.
I imagine I looked a lot like these second graders doing the Virginia Reel. Take a minute or two to watch them dance. Notice the joy on their faces but also notice how the partners interact both with one another and the other couples.
There is something spiritual about dancing traditional dances within a large group of people. The experience connected me across time. I imagined dancers in the old west hearing the same music as they too swung their partners around the dance floor.
There are obvious connections to liturgical worship. Each week we gather together, sing songs and engage in our own liturgical dance. We promenade into the sanctuary smiling and greeting others as we go. Throughout worship we stand, sit, and kneel. During the peace we turn and greet those around us. Near the end we promenade row by row to the front of the sanctuary for communion and then back to our seats.
Each week we follow in the footsteps of generations before us. We also join worshipers across the world who may play different music, but still use the same dance steps. Think about this the next time you go to worship – especially the first time you worship in person after COVID. Consider the millions of other people joining you and God in sanctuaries around the world.
But I want to go beyond the way we dance through worship.
The church teaches us to dance but that dance isn’t intended for our congregation’s eyes only. We are being taught how to dance in church so that we can dance in the world.
Yet we are mistaken if we think our dance as religious people makes us the performers and the rest of the world the audience. When we dance in the world, we join others in a much larger dance. God is calling out the dance moves and all of creation responds. The rhythms we learn in church add our unique moves to the dance of creation.
Where do hear God’s call today? Look around. Who else is dancing to the same beat? Perhaps you can Do-sa-do with them for a while.
