Letting God Lead

 This past Sunday night I went to a Milonga at the Philadelphia Tango School. A Milonga is a social gathering of sorts. This is characterized by dancing to three songs (called a set) and then resting for a song in between. During this rest, a brilliant Jazz pianist would play a song. When he was finished, the Tango music would come back on, and people would begin dancing.

I have only danced Tango one other time before this Sunday, and it was at the Tango school during one of their free lesson nights. On Sunday night however, there were no lessons, and only dancing. Because of the unequal number of guys and girls, many girls waited to dance. The men are always gracious and make sure all the women have a few dances.

Looking around the room at all of these brilliant dancers, I wondered how they made it look so easy. Especially after my difficult first dance of the night. When my lead would move, I found myself not moving in time with him and it would result in stepped on toes or having to pause and start again. After a few times I did this, my lead told me to focus on him, and so I did. I just focused on him and nothing else. And what started to happen was that I found myself moving almost gracefully about the room. When I stopped thinking about my steps and I focused on my partner, my body was able to read the slight movements of his body. I was alert and ready to step when he stepped, to move when he moved, I was ready to follow. It was only in completely letting go of everything else and following that we were able to glide around the room. It was in following that I learned things about myself, such as that I can do a cross, and a figure eight ( I think that's what it's called).

All I could think of the whole night was how this dance partner relationship is such an allegory to our relationship with God. When we focus on ourselves we end up fumbling, don't we? When we try and take our own steps outside of the glorious dance of our lives that God has prepared for us we find ourselves falling. But when we FOCUS on our God, letting everything else go, keeping our eye on him, it is then that we are able to move. When we are following God attentively, and expectantly, we begin to learn more about ourselves. We learn we can do things we never could on our own, we learn to take steps that seemed impossible to take by ourselves. When we let go and follow God's lead, we get to see how beautiful a dance our lives become.

Image from the Philadelphia Tango School