While visiting Vancouver, Canada, a few years ago, I stayed with a Christian woman studying dance, a field considered quite scandalous by her conservative Singaporean family.

She took me salsa dancing that week at a local hotel . She explained that her male partner, pressing gently on her back to communicate where he would lead her next, painted a beautiful picture of how God shepherds us on our spiritual journey. The path may be erratic and improvised, unpredictable and exciting, but He is always in control, guiding and spinning us with a gentle but firm hand.

Dance often acts as an intersection for Christians’ oscillating impulses between hedonism and asceticism. Confused about God’s intent for our physicality—and often unsure how to treat our physical selves—we alternately exploit our bodies for momentary pleasure or shun them as things to be hidden.

Matisse’s famous painting La Danse confronts this ambivalence. From one perspective, the dancers appear pure and Edenic. From another, they seem bent on selfish pleasure and out of control. While either extreme may compel us at any moment, we can begin to reconcile our conflicting perspectives and embolden our spirituality through prayerful meditation on the painting.

 To read the rest of this article, you can purchase the entire issue or just this article through our Journal Store.