It is not for unsteady souls.

 Image found here.

"You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, 
no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe 
hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that 
single fleeting moment when you feel alive. It is not for unsteady souls." 
- Merce Cunningham

 

It's true.  Sometimes dancing is really hard. There are days when my muscles ache, my feet are all blistered, my arms are scraped up, the steps just won't click, and I wonder why I keep doing this to myself. There are days when I want so badly to quit. 

But there are other days when I forget my battle scars, both physical and emotional, and I just focus on the movement. There are days when I can feel myself progressing and I dance with joy in my face and in every cell of my body. There are days when, as Cunningham said, I have that fleeting moment when I feel so intensely, beautifully alive. There are days when dancing helps me catch a vision of the divinity God put inside me and who He wants me to be. 

And that is why I dance - not for a grade, not to be fabulous (because I am certainly not), but for those spiritual moment that steady my soul and help me catch a glimpse of eternity. 

 Photo by Lois Greenfield.