The dance of faith

I’d like to synthetize the key insights that have been ripening over the past months, some of them since my first conversion in January, some just these last days. In a sense, there is nothing new or original (which I take it to be a good sign). In another sense, the way in which these now click together make me tremble. For once, I’d like to be short (1000 words).

How do I encounter Christ (or God, for that matter)? The answer lies in a way of moving, with my whole being (body included). I would call it a dance in four steps, just to stress that this kind of movement is in relation to another’s movement, it has its own rhythm, it whirlpools, and ultimately is the source of joy. This dance is also spicy (or rather salty, to recall Matthew 5:13), in the sense that it has a distinctive Christian flavor. But is there a dance that has no distinctive taste?

First step: I come down. The main reason why we miss the encounter with the divine is because we move up. We do this in two ways. Most often, we just pretend to be what we are not, we appropriate rights and claim degrees of control that we do not have. Old plain arrogance, conceit and pride. Sometimes, and more subtly, we assume that the divine must be so much above us that we need to meet it where it is: we can find the divine only insofar as we ascend to it. But Jesus teaches that God made the first step by coming down towards us. If we pretend to move up, we miss each other. Hence, to meet God we need to come down. This is the work of humility. To some extent, we can try to learn it and even deliberately cultivate it. Yet, humility also concerns our own implicit assumptions about what is true and what we expect, which tend to always steer our decisions by keeping us somehow in control. That’s why we usually come down by falling. When we fall, we don’t simply decide to softly land, we just lose control and meet the ground, in all our fragility, breaking our awkward scaffolds. Then and there we can really meet God (recall this).

Second step: You are my Father. Who is God? Jesus has a radical, unexpected, mind-blowing answer: God is my Father (see this). This changes the meaning of the world (like the salt that changes the taste of the food). I do not simply happen to exist because this or that reason. I am here because someone loved me so much to allow me into existence, so that I can choose to freely love Him in return and celebrate together, forever, in a play of dependency and autonomy. These are just poor words. What they point at is fathomless—and more importantly, very difficult to receive. As Jesus taught and lived in His own flesh, nothing is more difficult for human beings than to receive unconditional gratuitous love, without wanting to put at least some limits, conditions, but, if, perhaps. Did you ever catch yourself doing so?

Third step: Raising to the Cross. Love entails freedom, and freedom entails the possibility of saying “no”. The salt is sprinkled over the world, but not everybody in the world will receive it. The experience of faith is inevitably the experience of the Cross: rejection, solitude, misunderstanding, suffering. However, despite appearances, the experience of the Cross is also an experience of glory, happiness, fulfilment, union (remember this). Maybe the salt will reach someone who will start this dance of faith. There we can celebrate nothing but God’s own power, since we know that we are not doing anything but at best just witnessing something we have simply and imperfectly received. More often, perhaps, the salt will be ignored, dismissed, trampled—and nothing could be more painful for us. What then? That is our greatest school and test. In living with and amidst those who choose not to receive, we grow in humility, by recognizing that if we have received anything, we are not better than those who did not, and we actually did not deserve what we gratuitously enjoy. We learn what it really means to love unconditionally, without any expectation to be reciprocated or even understood. And we cultivate hope, because we know that it will never be too late for anybody to start dancing with God. In fact, the very act of saying “no” is a witnessing of freedom, and freedom is a witnessing of God’s love, so that in observing those who might pester and ignore any good witnessing we might bring, we actually recognize the presence of God’s own love, despite all denials or denigrations of it. Even death, in fact, can no longer do anything against us, because once everything has been lived through God’s love, which is eternal life, there is nothing left that can really die.

Fourth step: Giving thanks. What happens then is that our voice (our being, our innermost core) merges without disappearing into a choir of glory. We sing without words, in a multitude without figure, and we burst beyond our finite existence into the quiet, magnificent movement of simply being thankful for this whole dance. And this is the goal. Not my individual “salvation”, much less the “fixing” of this broken world, or perhaps some esoteric “knowledge”. The goal of dance is simply just to dance, for the joy of it.

To conclude, note that these four steps are also articulated in the liturgy: (first) an act of contrition to come down; (second) hearing the Word to recognize the Father; (third) partaking in the Crucifixion and Resurrection through the sacrament of the Eucharist; (fourth) enjoying the afterglow of thankfulness after the communion and in the final sending. It is true to say that a Mass is a feast—in fact, a salty dance party with God. Enjoy!