If I were to ever undertake the discipline of centering prayer, as have a number of my friends, I’d choose as my sacred word, dancing.

On our first date, Nancy and I tried dancing to the music of a Zydeco band. The results were laughable, but we signed up for dancing lessons, and by the end of the course, had set a wedding date. In those giddy days of new love, we’d sometimes start dancing to the piped-in music in the grocery store. The topper on our wedding cake was a dancing couple. The band for the reception was chosen for the danceability of its music.

Those days are long gone. But sometimes, life itself seems a dance, in which the events of our lives are our partners and each step we take is in response to their moves. It is easy to think of dancing to the hug of a grandchild; the yellow and blue of maple leaves against an October sky; the silence of snowfall; work well done or a game well played. Then we get knocked for a loop; by illness, betrayal, loss. For a time, we feel more like a pinball, battered by events beyond our control. But then, by grace, we find the rhythm and the grace, and we take up the dance again.

In Robert Earl Keen’s song, “No Kinda Dancer,” the chorus goes:

     I tried hard to tell you I was no kinda dancer
     ‘Took my hand to prove I was wrong
     You guided me gently
     Though I thought I could never
     We were dancing together at the end of the song

Can you find a better definition of love than this—the lover leading us beyond our self-imposed “can’t,” into a world of greater possibilities? I have received such gifts, as God, the ultimate lover, sometimes acting through Nancy or another agent, has led me, pushed me, “guided me gently” to places “I thought I could never.”

In literal, physical terms, I remain “no kinda dancer,” the aforementioned lessons notwithstanding. We haven’t danced in years. I sometimes fantasize that we’ll take lessons again, that we’ll move like Jennifer Lopez and Richard Gere in Shall We Dance, that we’ll tango like Jessica Biel and Colin Firth in Easy Virtue. Not likely. But, the larger dances still go on. And there is always hope.

That’s what dancing means to me: hope, gratitude, grace, thanksgiving, love.

     And it made me feel lucky that I had a partner
     to teach me the dance steps
     And come back again