Sunday, June 05, 2005

Swing Dance Parallelism

The other night at a swing dance lesson, the instructor mentioned three relationships a lead must have while dancing:
  • with the floor - without this foundation the person you dance with will not be able to follow
  • with your partner - even dancing with few steps is fun if you have "connection"
  • with the music - musicality and styling make a dance interesting and unique (as well as fun)
I thought about how the same is true with my spiritual walk:
  • the written Word - the foundation that enables me to have genuine and secure communication with God
  • the living Word - having the God's Spirit in and with me makes life fun
  • the work to do - each week is different because God asks me to do different things; life is interesting (as well as meaningful from having connectedness with God's Spirit)
Moreover, the difficulties are also parallel:
  • it is tiring to be constantly using a deep foundation -- laziness and weariness are problematic
  • when doing a new step it is easy to panic and lose focus -- this destroyes connectedness
  • when in a new situation we fear change and new styling -- the fear of looking foolish has us be bland and ignore the differences in opportunities