He taught me to dance in my tiny grad school living room. We had to push the futon out of the way to have room. Sure, I’d “danced” before, but I never could get my feet to do the right things, and I was nervous. I’m not generally clumsy,1 but there’s something about someone being that close and paying that much attention to the movement of my body that just makes me nervous.
But he was nice, and not my type, so I let him teach me.
“What do I do?” I asked, as he put his hand on the small of my back.
“Just lean back,” he smiled.
“But what are the steps? How do I count?” I’m sure a look of panic crept into my eyes, despite my desperate desire to maintain my composure.
“Just lean back and let me dance you. Relax and look into my eyes. In this style, the guy does the work.”
So I put my arm around his shoulders and my hand in his. Then I took a deep breath and let go of myself. I had to be loose for this. I had to surrender, to let him hold me and look at me and move me. A few times I tried to pay attention and catch up and do the “right thing” and it just got me all twisted. For this dance to work at all, I really had to let him lead.
I was wearing ripped jeans and flip flops, but I don’t know that I’ve ever felt so elegant or so graceful or so captivating. There was nothing between us but the dance, but oh, what a dance.
It was one of the most intimate moments of my life, looking into his eyes, being held so close, almost letting him carry me. It was pure and innocent and intense and I’m so grateful for that dance.
It’s a moment that comes back to me in prayer often, that ethereal half hour in the living room. There’s something so beautiful about that image,about the surrender involved in that dance.
I picture myself in the arms of Christ, just being held and adored. I spend my life doing and thinking and achieving, but here it’s enough just to be. There’s so much of me that wants to know what to do next, how to act, what steps to take, but that just makes me stumble. The beauty of dancing with a man who knows how to lead is that all I have to do is look into his eyes and trust.
And so in prayer and in life, I’m trying to lean back. I’m trying to let go of my plans and intentions and desires and to be caught up in his embrace. There, in his arms, I don’t have to do anything but let myself be loved. Dancing through life with him, I don’t have to know the song or the steps. I just have to let go of my obsession with being in control and let him lead.
For years, my relationship with Christ has been a romantic one. It’s the only way I can understand how consumed he is with love for me, the only way I can learn to live and move and have my being in him. Maybe this image of being held and loved and danced won’t work for those of you who see him differently–men especially–but, oh, what a gift it is to find him in prayer and to feel the beauty and the power and the intimacy of that living room dance session in his Eucharistic embrace.
More often than not, the song I hear is a setting of St. Ignatius’ Prayer for Surrender:
Take, oh Lord, and receive
All my liberty, my memory,
My understanding, and my will.
All that I am and all that I possess
You have given to me.
And I surrender it all to you.
Form it to your will.
Give me only your love and your grace!
For with these I am rich enough
And desire nothing more
How perfect.
Irregular
- That scar on my arm? I ran into the door. At the library. Just call me Evel Knievel. [↩]