Dancing with the flow

My husband and I have begun taking a dance class. Nothing too tricky -- we selected Slow Dance/Blues as a way to ease these elderly bodies back into a motion they haven't indulged in probably 20 years. One of the nice things about getting older is that we don't embarrass as easily, and are less concerned about appearances -- which is a good thing, as we are pretty awkward and clumsy at this point in the learning cycle!

What I find -- and I suspect he finds as well -- is that it is surprisingly hard to mirror the teacher's movements and gestures. I vaguely remember this difficulty from the aerobics class I took when pregnant with my first child (again, we're talking 20+ years ago!), but then, at least, there was a mirrored wall to help us. Now we rehearse in what appears to be an old grange hall, and there is nothing to reflect our movements back at us other than our own body awareness.

This morning I was reading -- in my hotel room in Portland, where I am taking a refresher day after dropping off the kids at college -- Cynthia Bourgeault's Wisdom Jesus again, and today she is talking about Jesus' post-resurrection appearances. There are four of them: to Mary, to the disciples and Thomas at dinner, to the two on the road to Emmaeus, and the last by a lake in Galilee as he catches fish with the disciples and eats with them. In each case he is unrecognizable at first, and Cynthia suggests that that might be because initially "Jesus is in fact holding a mirror before his friends to show them what stands in their way, what they will have to look at and work through in themselves in order to be able to see him through the light of their own hearts."

It is as if the disciples, too, are learning to dance: they have been watching Jesus' steps for quite a while now, but once he is out of the room, they're getting tangled in their own feet. They need this mirror to see what's getting in the way -- a lover's grief for the lost physicality of the body (in Mary's case); self-doubt and self-pity (in the case of the disciples); an inability to step out of our own challenges and concerns to care for those around us (in the case of Peter, who can't figure out what Jesus means by the phrase "feed my sheep.")

I remember once, on a centering prayer retreat, Cynthia was describing kenotic self-emptying with this repeated gesture, in which she would open both hands downward from her chest, as if a flower were opening and spilling out its seeds. In a moment of frustration, thinking if I could just mirror that image with my own hands I could somehow implant the spiritual concept in myself at a more physical level, I asked if she would demonstrate the movement again and allow us to echo it. I was having the same trouble mirroring her movements that I now have in the dance class mirroring the teacher's movements.

But she refused to do that, saying that our job was not to imitate her but to find within ourselves the Christ-like gesture of self-emptying, which might be different for each of us.

Our dance teacher advised us, as our first class was ending, to practice dancing at home. So two nights ago, while the kids were upstairs watching TV, my husband and I put on some slow dance music in the living room and, stepping into each other's arms, began the slow task of remembering the steps from class and pacing awkwardly around the room. It wasn't perfect, but I think we did manage to improve. Because it was dark outside, and because the room has windows on three sides, I could watch our reflections in the mirror, and see a bit better what wasn't working, make the subtle shifts of pace and angle that would allow the dance to flow more smoothly.

Because, in the end, that's the way you know it's working, when it flows smoothly. I think that's true of kenotic self-emptying as well, that compassionate response Jesus was trying to call forth from Peter by that lake in Galilee. It's not a kind of martyrdom, where your pour yourself out for everyone who needs you and end up feeling spent and exhausted, wondering when someone will take care of YOU.

It's more an act of releasing those things which come between us and the person we were born to be, the person Christ calls us to be; of emptying out the self-centeredness that gets in the way and blocks the flow. When we remove those obstacles, even a bit, I imagine the flow of compassion can begin in earnest, both into and out of us, a never-ending outpouring that has an unquenchable divine source and spills over into all aspects of our lives, graceful and lush and rewarding as this waterfall.