To Dance Is To Let The Divine Move Through Us

— Dance is one way of taking initiative to exform when the tears won't come, or when they won't stop. When we have something that needs shaking loose or sweating out in high kicks, the wild mosh, the crowd surf. And dancing together is even better than dancing alone. One Oxford study of pain revealed that dancing in sync with a group made dancers able to bear more pain. (Of course, they didn't control for people who find any kind of dancing in public painful.) Dance is the body's jazz hands for the soul. Dance is God on the move. Dance is what we do when we have too many feelings and not enough words. Dance don't cost a thing, and it belongs to everybody. To dance is to let God move through us, reanimate us no matter what death-dealers are after us, the perichoresis that began before everything, the music of the spheres that will play on long after we are gone. Dance is every one of you, rising from your own ashes. Every day, someone, somewhere, faces the powers of death. But then they make one little move. They put down the bottle. They call the therapist, the DV hotline, the immigration lawyer. They write their name on the application. If they are lying down, they get up. They join the dance. To dance is to laugh in the face of death and all its minions. As long as we can dance, they have not won. Whoever "they" are.

Valeria interviews Molly Baskette — the author of "How to Begin When Your World Is Ending: A Spiritual Field Guide to Joy Despite Everything."

Molly Baskette is an author, progressive Christian pastor, mama, cancer survivor and doomsday Pollyanna (who thinks we may yet avoid the total collapse of human civilization). A Boston native, she now lives in the Bay Area where she hikes in the hills or marches in the streets, depending on the day. Her new book, How to Begin When Your World is Ending is a treasury of post-traumatic resilience and joy.

To learn more about Molly Baskette and her work, please visit: mollybaskette.com

— This podcast is a quest for well-being, a quest for a meaningful life through the exploration of fundamental truths, enlightening ideas, insights on physical, mental, and spiritual health. The inspiration is Love. The aspiration is to awaken new ways of thinking that can lead us to a new way of being, being well.