Dance With the Divine

"In Repose"

The universe is constantly in motion. Think of the waves of the ocean as they perpetually wash onto the shore and back out into the sea. Picture the movement of the clouds through the sky as they alternate between lazy days of wispy haze floating through the sky to the huge thunderclouds that can roar across an expanse in mere moments. The rotation of the earth and the planets as they orbit the sun create patterns of days, seasons, and years.

We too were designed to be in motion. We can either be in step with nature or out of step. As a wise man once said, “There is a time for everything.” But too often we are out of step with the rhythms of the universe. In our modern, stay busy constantly culture, we have somehow gotten frozen into a constant “on” position.

The value we place on accomplishment, accumulation, and advancement seem to have blinded us to the balancing gifts of playfulness, pause, and peacefulness. Just like the day pauses from being sun-filled and radiant to star-filled and reflective, so our lives were designed to be in balance with a time for doing and a time for resting; a time for working and a time for playing; a time to for determined, purposeful steps, and a time to dance.

The idea of motion is really about energy and how we use it. Ideally, it is about harmony and balance. Our lives feel beautiful and well lived when they have something of all the good things that we can partake of. Think of how different the motion of sleep feels to the energy of work. Imagine what it is like when you do not get to sleep and become worn out and fatigued. We were designed to alternate between resting and working. This is so vital to our health that we become sick when we do not respect these basic physical principles.

Spiritually we can become sick or weak when we do not take time to balance the doing and being aspects in our lives. Creating sacred space in your life is an important part of balancing energies to bring about harmony and joy. Too often our focus is on accumulating material things and we forget the importance of spending time finding out who we are and why we are here.

Days can go by without creating time for sacred activities—meditation, prayer, reading sacred scripture and taking the time to dance with the Divine. When we neglect these activities it is like skipping sleep or forgetting to eat. Our spirit becomes dull and we have a vague hunger for something more.

Next time you are tempted to fill up your life with more busyness, stuff, or doing consider the ocean, the clouds, and the sun and moon. They vary their cycle’s everyday, waxing and waning, rolling into the earth and back out to the sea. We too need to take time to dance, pray often, and listen instead of speak. The more we open ourselves to these possibilities the more beautiful our dance will become.