Those who are living in love are living in God, and God lives through them. 1 John 4:16 (TPT)
God is the Dance – Live In the Movement Series – Part 2
Go to PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6 | PART 7
We tend to imagine God as a static being. A someone. An image we can pin down and define. Someone who sits still as if he were being observed, painted, drawn, by a world trying to grasp his likeness.
We talk about God in defined terms. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, separate, with their individual functions and roles, and personhood. Single.
CS Lewis said:
“God is not a static thing — not even a person — but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance.” (1.)
In his book, The Divine Dance, Richard Rohr says:
“Whatever is going on in God is a flow, a radical relatedness, a perfect communion between Three— a circle dance of love. And God is not just a dancer; God is the dance itself. Now hold on to this. This is not some new, trendy theology from America. This is about as traditional as you can get. Here it is in the words of Brother Elias Marechal, a monk at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia: The ancient Greek Fathers depict the Trinity as a Round Dance: an event that has continued for six thousand years, and six times six thousand, and beyond the time when humans first knew time. An infinite current of love streams without ceasing, to and fro, to and fro, to and fro: gliding from the Father to the Son, and back to the Father, in one timeless happening. This circular current of trinitarian love continues night and day…. The orderly and rhythmic process of subatomic particles spinning round and round at immense speed echoes its dynamism.” (2.)
God doesn’t begin with one person, The Divine begins, and thrives in relationship, with what we call the Father, Son, and Spirit. Trinity. “A radical relatedness, a perfect communion between Three— a circle dance of love.”
We are so individualistic that we think God is, too. We wrongly start with the single. But we all originated by relationship. We were conceived by two people, then miraculously grew inside one, intrinsically connected, sharing the same blood and water, until the day we were born and the cord was cut. We started in relationship. And after our physical connection was severed from our mother, the relationship – the blood, spirit, and connection of family – carried us and has, to a point, made us who we are.
God is essentially relational and can be described as the essence of connection itself.
1 John 4:16 (TPT) says:
“God is love! Those who are living in love are living in God, and God lives through them.”
The translators have left a footnote to this verse that says: “God continually exists, being love.” (see it here)
God lives in the movement of love. Of the pouring out of oneself for another, just to be filled again by another who has poured itself out in love, too.
The Divine is not a static being, a white man in the clouds with a big beard watching everything you do and writing it all down in a book so he can tell you all your sins one day (as if you would have forgotten them) and how your mansion in heaven has been downgraded accordingly.
The Divine is grace and peace and love. The Divine is connection and electricity and energy. God is found in the flow of relationship. He is movement and spirit and wind and water and earth and breath, fire and blood.
So, what do we do with this dancing God who is the dance himself?
We join in.
Go to Loved on a Very Deep Level – Live In the Movement Series – Part 3
Written by Liz Milani
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1). CS Lewis. Mere Christianity. Williams Collins. 1952
2). Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation. SPCK. Kindle Edition.
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