Dance and be Glad

Then young women will dance and be glad,

young men and old as well.

I will turn their mourning into gladness;

I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow.

- Jeremiah 31:13

A group from our agency attended a mixed ability dance workshop here in the city and we had a lot of fun together - they keep dancing in and out of my life. If there's one thing I've learned from people with developmental disabilities it is that God created us to dance, and since we were created in God's image (Genesis 1:27) it must be in God's nature to dance with us, as we fall into the arms of the One who loves us most. 

If there's anything else I've learned it's that the sanctity of dance has been distorted by our fallen world. So much of what passes for dance today is inward-turned, sex-obsessed, self-absorbed, and as the latest "reality" TV shows will attest: competitive. 

In stark contrast, they step into dance cooperatively not competitively, a community-building expression of their life together. We may tend to be a bit clumsy (hopelessly clumsy, in my case) and step on a foot or two, but there's always someone there to pick up the pieces, as we fall and get up again. You won't find anyone dancing alone. Even as stilted and flat-footed as I am, I too am called to participate in the life of God and join in the dance. We come as we are; stripped of our pretenses, rejoicing in the presence of God. 

I awkwardly picked up a client of mine who is unable to stand on his own and carried him on my back with the help of two others holding up his legs from behind. We initiated a "dancing train" as we dizzingly circled the room together, laughing all the way. Here he was, the most uncoordinated and least mobile among us, teaching us all a profound lesson in dance, as we came together to support him, lift him up, and dance unhesitatingly. 

We left the dance workshop with our hearts still leaping with such lightness of being it felt as if our feet weren't even touching the ground. We poured out of the theatre into the downtown streets of corporate Calgary with business people on their lunch break; appropriately dressed; appropriately behaved - but with an expression of slight sadness - burdened with the serious business of the day. Oh Lord, let heaven come down, give them reason to dance today.