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A Sensible Proposal to Reform Religion

Once, in a silly moment of self-indulgence, I had thought that getting up and walking after having had hip surgery was painful; almost more than I could do.  But then I remembered what it was like to have gout; thinking that I was walking on the rawest splinters of broken bones in my foot.  As you might surmise, I have not had much notable pain in my life.  In fact, the most painful moments in my life have not had to do with surgery or broken bones, at all.  They have been when someone has asked me to dance.

And truth be told, the pain of having to dance, when I could not, has been more painful for the other person in closest proximity when I have tried to dance.  But I have not felt overly sorry for them:  they had a choice.  I had none.  I cannot dance.

Why can I not dance?  I have taken dancing lessons.  It was like trying to teach a rock to float; like asking a frog to sing a serenade.  It was humiliating.

Why can I not dance?  I have the best of credentials for not being able to dance.  I was a Lutheran of Norwegian persuasion.  My father was born in what other Norwegians call the Dark Continent; at least on the edge of it:  that part of Norway where the sky is often overcast with clouds and cold rain, where laughter is most easily found in the failings of the neighbors, where God is severe, and the hymns are slow, and where dancing--real dancing--is a sin.  I did visit those relatives once at Christmas, and we did dance around the Christmas tree, but that "dancing" was more of a sideways shuffle while singing a slow hymn, and holding hands so as not to lose one's way while getting around to the next stanza.

That aversion to dancing, or that parody of dancing, only partially survived the emigration of those grim folk to America.  I do not recall ever dancing around the Christmas tree.  I do not recall any other kind of dancing, either.  Nor do I recall any fire-breathing sermons against dancing, because The Reverend Svinth did not breathe fire for any reason whatsoever.  But we knew!  We knew sin when we saw it!  We had heard why our Baptist neighbors were against having sex while standing up:  it might lead to dancing!  We were a generation of Norwegian Lutherans for whom dancing was about as far as you can go short of what is best not spoken of, at all.

One of the most delightful and dreadful evenings of my life was a Christmas party in a different part of Norway, over there where the sun shines on the Lake, and the snow builds up on trees and fences to make postcards.  I watched friends and their friends dancing as if it were ecstasy--not sin--and all I wished is that I had learned to sin early on.  No, I never believed that dancing was a sin--at least not perceptibly--but the deep darkness in the Scandinavian souls of my lame Lutheran community had denied me of what it is to laugh and dance.  I grew up scarcely able to walk, knowing that rhythm was a temptation and that some music lured one to . . . Oh, god!  I do not know!  Perhaps to having sex standing up.

That is why I do not go to church, why I do not bow my head to Ancestral Beliefs.  It has less to do with imagined kingdoms above the clouds and damnation below ground than it has to do with never having learned to dance.  Were I younger, were I still in possession of my natural-born hip, and not walking in uric acid crystals, were I coordinated enough to dance a lovely wicked line, I should commit myself to a campaign to cause such religions to commit amnesia, and convince them to teach dancing; to do nothing but teach dancing, to show every child and convert how to hold each other tenderly, and how to dance, standing up!   And they would be confirmed to the music of strings, and they would dance; not around a Christmas tree, but up the aisle and out the door and through life.


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