I was walking though a city park on a mild, sunny Sunday afternoon.
To my surprise, in the middle of the widely paved pedestrian thoroughfare, a portable floating dance floor had been laid, music was blaring from a state-of-the-art sound system and the floor was filled with people of all ages, shapes and sizes.
They waltzed, they rocked, they bopped and they improvised. Nobody was worried about quality, nobody was dancing with a star and nobody had a wannabe celebrity judging their every step and swing. This was amateur hour. This was happy hour. These were simple people (I say that with complete benevolence), enjoying an innocent and ancient pastime that required negligible expense and minimal energy, soaking up a stupendous sunny Sunday afternoon.
The lyrics of that old sixties song by the Young Rascals immediately sprang to mind:
Groovin’ . . . on a Sunday afternoon.
Really, couldn’t get away too soon.
I can’t imagine anything that’s better . . .
We’ll keep on spending sunny days this way
We’re gonna talk and laugh our time away
It seemed so strangely out of place, and yet so profoundly in the very place it should be. The Broadwalk Ballroom read the sign above the tent shading the DJ and her range of musical equipment. As I awkwardly edged my way around this open-air dance floor I couldn’t help thinking of the pleasures of the gift of dancing. It’s hard to dance and be down in the dumps. It lifts the spirits, lightens the step and chases away the complexities of life, at least for a time.
I thought of the last time I had danced, and I couldn’t remember. It may have been a recent wedding but I wasn’t sure. I remembered the times Helen and I danced at home. Quietly, in the lounge room, to some soft, gentle music, cheek to cheek, long after the kids had gone to bed. We didn’t do it very often, certainly not often enough, and we haven’t done it for quite a while. Our kids have now long flown the nest, and busy putting their own kids to bed.
I remembered family socials in my church back in the eighties. We danced at those socials; mums and dads, singles and sole-parents, grandparents and kids.
What I remember most clearly about those old church socials, and, oh, what delight it gave me, was to see university professors and coal miners doing the chicken dance side by side. And single mums, yuppy doctors, struggling pensioners, stalwart patriarchs and ratty kids pouring drinks from the same no-name soft drink bottle and serving salads from the same plastic bowl, like they were cut, like coal, or like diamonds, from the same quarry – because we all knew that, in Christ, we were.
When was the day I forgot to dance? When did life get so serious, issues so urgent that I forgot to have that sort of fun? When was the last time I laughed so hard, it ached so much that I thought I was having a heart attack? Have I lost, have we lost, the art of enjoying the simple things of life? Have we forgotten these wonderful words:
Not to place our hope in wealth which is so uncertain but to put our hope in God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment (1Timothy 6:17)
Have we forgotten the gracious provision of a sabbath, Sunday school picnics, and church socials. Of long, lazy Sunday afternoons, of inviting strangers in church back to lunch, after lunch walks to the park with sea-saws, swings and slippery-dips.
Maybe I’m just getting old and nostalgic. Perhaps in a generation’s time my kids will be ruing the day that we left Facebook and Xbox behind for some yet to be imagined form of entertainment and even more remote experiences of electronic relationships.
I know it’s not politically correct to drop this name on a Christian website, and I’ll probably cop a hiding for doing so, but the lyrics of another old song have sprung to mind. Cat Stevens in the opening song on his classic Tea For The Tillerman album asked,
I know we’ve come a long way,
We’re changing day to day,
But tell me, where do the children play?
Did the Cat have any idea that the answer to his question might be found in darkened rooms hypnotised by silicon chips? Was Stevens, better known as Yusuf these days, being prophetic about the pervasive onslaught of pro-choice and euthanasia views when he asked,
Will you can tell us when to live,
Will you tell us when to die?
Have we forgotten to dance: in marriage, as families, communities, even as a nation, and perhaps as a church, and a diocese? Can we go back to that day? Can we learn to dance again?
Do we need to gamble our way into deeper debt, drink our way into number nights, eat our way into unhealthy obsessions and amuse our way into atrophied brains?
Can we enjoy God-given gifts of life again; without the need for ubiquitous technology, virtual friendships, degustation experiences, European engineered cars, exotic holidays, expensive toys and people playing God?
Can we enjoy together the simple pleasures of life as we rejoice together in the stupendous gospel of grace?
Can we learn how to dance again? Can we learn how to dance to the music of heaven?
