Dancing to Carols?

“Dance, of course, 

is embrace and steps.”

It’s noisy in the bayside resort where my friend Steve staffs the breakfast buffet.  Last night this space was the bar, and the requisite televisions, with their news, sports, and weather, compete for my hearing. 

“Say that again?” I ask, turning my better ear toward him, not only to hear better, but to let him know I need him to speak up.  I hate asking him to do that.  His voice is as soft and reverent as his words…all his words, now that I think of it.

“Dance consists of embrace and steps.  We spend too much time trying to get the steps right.  We forget about the embrace part.”

How does he do that?  How does he know that he can say something so casually, like this chat over morning coffee on my drive-by his workplace, that is like the things Jesus would say to a woman at a well, or a beggar at a gate? 

Lord, that I might dance!  I can already see, and I have no sick daughter at home, and there is no hemorrhage, but oh, did Steve just peg me!

I’m all about the steps, you see.  Getting it right.  We were that way as kids, weren’t we?  Wasn’t it embarrassing for all of us to get out there with our pimply faces and sweaty hands and try to appear comfortable and adept? 

Kathy and I are known for our dancing.  We’ve got the steps.  Everybody loves to watch us, enjoying our joy.  We do a dance that we learned 44 years ago when we met in college.  I dance with no one but her, and our daughters when I get the chance, and soon our granddaughters.  Our dance is a sacred thing.  “43 years of practice”, I tell them when they praise us.

When Kathy had her “exacerbation”, the onset of what was quickly diagnosed as Multiple Sclerosis five years ago, she was, for a few weeks, without normal balance and very low on energy.  At a niece’s wedding, the steps could not possibly come.  We stood together on the floor, she needing me for balance.  Even as the tempo of the dance music moved our skin, our muscles were leaden, our bones stone.  Kathy’s arms limp, my hands holding on to hers, our feet hardly moving, we unsuccessfully attempted to blink back the tears that came. 

I blink them back now.  I didn’t think of it as an embrace.  I thought of it as the loss of dance.

Kathy has her balance back, and most of her energy.  And we have our dance back.  But Steve is right, not only about my dancing, but my life.  I am all about the steps.  I’m all about what to do.  I’m always moving.  I’m always trying to do the right thing…and I’m always pulling away.  I live encounters like I dance: quickly into them, intensely present and in synch, reasonably adept.  But now that I think about it, I’m counting on the song ending, so I can….  So I can what?  What is there that I need to do that abbreviates my encounters? 

Why can’t I …LIGHT!?  Ahh.  In this season of light-in-the-darkness, perhaps it is a different kind of “light” I’m drawn to in Steve’s words.  Kathy asks me often, pleads with me, really: “Will you light for a minute so we can talk?”

I think Steve is coming about the same truth as Kathy’s plea.  It happens, he says, to be his truth, but it is also mine.  The dance of life is not just about the steps.  It’s also about the embrace.  T.S. Eliot refers so adeptly to this in “Burnt Norton” in his “Quartets”

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

Without the stillness of embrace, without resting in encounter, there is no dance. 

I gotta work on my technique.  I gotta light in companionship. 

Christmas gives us a great opportunity to enjoy the stillness and light in the embrace of relationships, if we can remember not to be preoccupied by all the steps.  

NEXT:  I'm Doofus, the forgotten fourth Magus.  Come back tomorrow to learn why.