Y. DON'T FORGET TO DANCE

You are the last person who needs to be reminded to dance. You've discovered in your own life the liberating power of dance. From that experience you are probably learning that that applies not only as an art form, but as a lifestyle.

When we lived in England for a period, Tim was attending art school in London. I visited him one week-end when his school was sponsoring a square dance. We attended and at one point the square dance caller was explaining a rather complicated new dance and concluded by saying, "and we end up just where we started," at which a bloke in the back said, "Then what's the point?"

"Ts'ao-Shu Dancer I" by Tim Holmes
Although he was joking, I think I've known people who have that attitude about the dance of life. Life is serious and ought to be lived with a clear direction from point A to point B. The more important truth is that we do not dance in order to get somewhere.

Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher, who claimed to be an atheist, even said, "I would believe only in a god who could dance." Picking up on that statement, in 1970, Sam Keen, a theologian who prefers to call himself a philosopher, wrote a book which he called To a Dancing God (see below) in which he says, "The dance continues. That is life" and the essays in his book give expression to that in various ways.

Several years ago, the teen-age daughter of a good friend of ours was killed in a senseless car accident for which she was not responsible. Her name was Rachael. Her father drew this sketch called "Rachael Dancing." which he felt expressed the spirit of her life. He titled it with a quotation from St. Augustine which pretty well expresses the point of this next to last little alphabetical thought:

"To be an allelujah, from head to toe."

In other words, as someone else has said, "A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.

EXTENDED READING IF INTERESTED""EXTENDED READING IF YOU'RE INTERESTED

Sam Keen, To a Dancing God


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