Dancing

Swing dancing is a ridiculous thing. Unplanned, unculcated, unrehearsed, unintelligible. The lead is completely in control. His job is to dance and take the follow with him. The follow? We try to look as nice as possible in a state of confusion, instability, spontaneity, and terror. At any second the lead could pull a move that we don't know, or twirl us into another dancer, or lose the beat, or kick us, or drop us. It's horrible, and we're even expected to keep on smiling in this giddy craziness. Supposedly it gets fun, and following becomes natural and easy, and living on the edge of control becomes relaxing. Supposedly.

To follow is to be hyper-aware of the pressure on your hand and your back. It is to totally let go and be totally focused at the same time. It's silly. There's no Plan B because there's no Plan A. Planless and controlless, the girls are thrown into the arms of men that are generally entirely unprepared for the level of power that is being handed to them in the form of a girl in masking taped Converse. Our excuse for refusing to follow is that the guys don't know what they're doing - the truth is that nobody likes to give up that amount of control to anyone, no matter how responsible, prepared, and omniscient the Lead happens to be.

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I want to follow God but I don't want to be A Follow. I want to go where He leads, but I don't picture a dance but a hiking trip - God marks out the pathway, and I study the map and highlight any trails that look dangerous and time how long it'll take me to walk a mile uphill and pack adequate food and leave on time so that the sun doesn't go down before I get there.

But if life is a dance, then there is no map or sign or backpack or even a watch. Following God is different than being A Follow to God's Lead. To be A Follow means by definition that you just - don't - know. To be A Follow means having that connection between you and The Lead that allows you to go wherever he goes on a split seconds notice, even if it's not what you expected. Complete spontaneity, complete submission, and complete recklessness. You just can't know what God is going to do, so asking Him and trying to figure it out means that you lose the connection in the dance. All you can and should do is to focus on the pressure on your hand and trust that He won't swing you into another dancer, and He won't lose the rhythm, and He won't throw a move at you that you don't know or you can't learn.

"Religion should not so much be thought out as danced out." - R.R. Marett