“When I get down and my life is logjammed and I need some affirmative action, I go where people dance. I don’t mean joints where people go to get crocked and then wobble around on the floor to music. I mean places where people who really like to dance go to do that. I like dancers. Never met a serious dancer who wasn’t a pretty fine human being. And I enjoy the never-ending pleasure of being surprised by just who dancers are. It does me good to see a couple of ill-builts – kind of fat and homely and solemn and all – get up on the floor and waltz like angels. When I see people like that on the street and start to look down my nose at them, a better voice in my head says “probably dancers” and I feel better about them. And me.”
When I first read these words of minister and author Robert Fulgrum, I thought of Phil Jackson who, although he is also an author, is better known as a basketball coach. Jackson, a devotee of a Zen approach to life, once wrote that he doesn’t view the opposing team as his enemy, but as a dancing partner. When we make an adversary out of those people and situations that oppose us, we make life and relationships harder than they have to be.
In my spiritual direction practice, I speak with many people who wrestle with themselves and with the God of their understanding as they attempt to overcome what they view as shortcomings or barriers to their spiritual growth. These well-intentioned lovers of their souls struggle and strive to become more selfless and less selfish, more virtuous and less ego driven, more mindful and less distracted; they have, in short, fallen prey to the illusion that in order to become more holy, one must become less human.
Rather than striving to rid ourselves of perceived impediments to our spiritual growth, I am an advocate for dancing with them. I take this approach because it is the paradoxical nature of the spiritual life that what appears to be in the way to attaining our goals is more often the way to becoming the person we want to be. Rather than resisting what we label problematic, the notion of dancing affirms that spiritual maturity is not about achieving ideals, but being compassionate toward ourselves when we fail to reach them. It is not a matter of willpower, but of yielding to the presence and power of grace – the benevolent spiritual force that enables us to become our best self.
Attuned to Soul 