Office of Communications > Weekly Reflection > May 9, 2008

He’s Fred Astaire in a collar, Gregory Hines in a cowl.  He’s a priest by vocation, a Dominican by profession, but his heart still loves the dance.

He entered the world a sickly child, pigeon-toed and shy.  The family physician and seer suggested they put him in dance.  Before he was three, his mother traded diapers for leotards.  But it wasn’t always easy in a Texas town where macho is king and dance is the Two-Step, a lady in one hand and a Lone Star in the other.

He danced his way through the tender years and lived at the studio after school.  He straightened his step, mastered his motion and found his confidence.  At 16, he was invited to the lights of New York but by senior year, God had turned down the music and whispered of another way.  He wasn’t going to be a dancer after all.

After years of theology and canon law, decades of preaching and service, his fire for the dance still burns bright.  He’s brought others to the party, inviting parishioners young and old to move into the grace of ballroom dancing and the undulation of Latin rhythm.

He understands why Samuel says “David danced before the Lord.”  It begins with the execution of the step, the fluid wash of the body, the final surrender to the song.  Somewhere in there, the movement becomes meditation, the dancer transformed and released, caught in the trance of the spirit, emptied of self and filled with presence. 

He’s yet to tap out a sermon or phrase a parable, but he has found a prayer that works for him.  From allemande to Zorba’s dance, he’s done it all and finds himself a better priest for doing it.  The poet writes of the road not taken, but this man wouldn’t know – he’s managed to travel them both.  He simply learned early on that the secret to dancing with God is to let the other lead.