Worship as Dance

I came across something today that credits famed Christian author C.S. Lewis comparing worship to a dance, when arguing against liturgical innovators who seemed to be wanting to create a weekly variety show in worship. Here is what I found:

"Worship, Lewis wrote, should be a bit like dancing. Once you have learned how to dance and have become good at it, you are able to immerse yourself in the dance and just do it almost without thinking about it. But if you must constantly look down at your feet, if you have to think about each movement before you actually make it, then you can't dance yet but are just learning how to dance.

Worship is like that, Lewis thought. A believer should be able to move through the liturgy without having to check his every movement first. An ideal service would be one you hardly notice in the sense of your simply being immersed and caught up in a set of actions and a series of thoughts that are fully a part of you already."

I like that analogy because I too believe worship is to be something that should flow out of us. I like, as well, that a good dance is one that has a firm, technical base but when it gets really good is when the dancers improvise and make minor adjustments to the dance along the way. Finally, what makes for a good dance is a good dance partner and in worship we join with the best of partners... remember good dance partners are not strangers, but ones who have an intimate connection with one another.