Glissés (and marriage)

On Monday night, we did glissés during dance technique class. Start in Unity, swish, point, close swish, point, close, and so on. Sounds easy enough, doesn't it? But my dance teacher insisted- at that split second when the feet come together in 'close', our body weight has to be evenly distributed on both feet, instead on the supporting leg. Then when we 'swish', our weight should be very firmly standing tall on the supporting leg, while the swishing foot should remember to 'clean the floor' when swishing out, pointing hard at the maximum angle-of-swish, then 'clean the floor' again when swishing back in.

So as my brain, feet, calf muscles, hamstring multivariate muscle and tendon groups and neurons tried to remember and put all those into practice best I could, I thought, what a good metaphor this is of marriage!

At least, in so far as we recognise in marriage, that rhythm where each partner has to continually switch between executing moves which only he can execute, depending on the other for support, then returning back to a position of rest where both are together in every way. Each day of marriage is filled with such moves - household responsibilities and tasks are shared, partners in most cases have different daytime jobs, different activities they might choose to do in their leisure time. And yet at no time at all, through all these moments, at no time at all is one able to do without the support of the other partner. And, should the leg doing glissés forget to share the weight when it closes, just imagine the added stress that would be placed on the other leg.

But still a greater challenge remains for the partner legs- my dance instructor then explained to us that the reason for both legs having to share the weight equally even just for that split second is because this would enable us to achieve the balance needed for executing assemblé soutenus later on in the centre.

And there will be assemblé soutenus to execute in our marriage, too. Parenting (if God wills), ministry, running a household of faith... and so in the meantime, may we do our glissés well.