The Dance of Desire: Listening to God in Relationship
When Discernment Becomes a Movement We Share
My granddaughter Clara is learning to talk, which means there are many moments when she knows exactly what she wants to tell me and I have absolutely no idea what she is saying. She will take my hand or begin moving toward something, speaking very earnestly in words I cannot quite understand. Because I love her and want to know what she desires, I move with her. I watch where she is going. I ask a question. Do you want a snack? Do you want to go outside? Sometimes I get it right. Sometimes I turn toward the completely wrong thing, and she makes it abundantly clear that I have misunderstood. So we try again.
There is something about these exchanges that has been teaching me about listening to God. Not because my relationship with Clara fully explains my relationship with God, but because it reminds me that listening has never been limited to hearing the right words. Sometimes listening looks more like learning how to move with someone we love.
Listening to God Is More Than Hearing Words
I wonder how often I have waited for God to make something perfectly clear. I want the words; I want to understand what God desires; I want to know where we are going before I take the next step.
And when I cannot hear clearly, frustration can come quickly.
Yet with Clara, I do something different. Because I know her words are still forming, I become attentive to her whole movement. I watch, wonder, ask, and move a little to notice her response. If I have misunderstood, I allow myself to be redirected. Perhaps listening to God asks something similar of me.
There are certainly moments when clarity comes, but much of my experience of discernment has been less like receiving directions and more like discovering the next movement within a relationship. I notice something stirring, a desire returning, and I move toward it, paying attention to what happens within me and within my relationship with God. I may discover that I misunderstood, and then we move again.
Misunderstanding does not mean the relationship has failed. Sometimes it simply means we keep dancing.
Listening to God in the Dance of Desire
I have often described discernment as listening for the deepest desire within us, because I believe our deepest desire and God’s desire are ultimately drawing us toward one another. However, that does not mean the movement is always easy to recognize. Sometimes my relationship with God feels almost fluid. There is a sense of being carried into the next movement before I have even had time to think about it. I know when to step and when to wait. There is freedom in it.
At other times, the dance feels much less graceful. I move when perhaps I should have waited. I become frustrated because God does not seem to be moving in the direction I thought we were going. I try to lead something that I might actually be invited to follow. Or perhaps a desire within me needs to be brought more honestly into the relationship rather than pushed aside because I have already decided what God must want. This is why I am increasingly drawn to the image of discernment as a dance.
Dance makes room for movement; it is initiated by desire. It even allows room for getting the next step wrong. I think this is because the goal is not flawless choreography; the goal is communion - it pulls two people toward one another in a common rhythm in hopes they might, together, create something that draws others into sharing in its flow.
Discernment is not simply hearing God correctly. It is learning to move with God in a relationship of desire.
When Listening to God Feels More Like Wrestling
Of course, not every encounter with God feels like a dance. Sometimes it feels much more like Jacob wrestling through the night. I have always been moved by the intimacy of that encounter. God does not stand somewhere outside Jacob’s struggle, waiting for him to settle himself and come back when he has figured everything out. God enters the wrestling. There is struggle and persistence. Jacob grasps and refuses to let go. And somehow, within all of that exertion, the relationship continues. I recognize something of myself there.
There have been times when listening to God has included frustration, resistance, questions, even my insistence that I know where we should be going. I can mistake that struggle for failure, as though a healthy relationship with God should always feel peaceful and my discernment should unfold neatly once I have learned to listen well enough. Jacob gives me another possibility. Perhaps wrestling can also be intimate. Could the places where I am grappling with God be places where God has not disappeared? Maybe God is right there in the struggle.
Becoming Someone Who Is Listening to God
The more I think about my exchanges with Clara, the more I realize that what keeps us moving is not our ability to understand one another perfectly. It is relationship. I love her, so I remain curious. I keep watching, letting her redirect me. When frustration appears, we do not abandon one another. We stay together long enough to find our way.
What might happen if I trusted my relationship with God enough to listen this way?
Discernment would become less about discovering the correct answer and more about becoming responsive to the One I have come to know - sometimes I will follow, other times I will wrestle.
Sometimes I may even be surprised to discover that a desire rising within me is not something God is asking me to surrender, but something God is inviting me to bring more fully into our relationship.
And when I misread the movement, we can move together again.
A discerning person is not someone who always knows the next step. A discerning person is someone willing to remain in the dance.
An Embodied Pause for Listening to God
If you are able, stand somewhere you can move comfortably. Feel both feet against the floor. Do not go anywhere yet. Simply notice what it feels like to be grounded where you are.
Then slowly shift your weight toward one foot. Notice the moment before the other foot becomes free to move. There is a small surrender required in every step. Something must release so that something else can receive your weight.
Let yourself gently shift from one side to the other without deciding where you need to go.
As you breathe in, pray: Lead me, Lord.
As you breathe out, pray: Teach me to move with You.
Then become still again. Notice where you are now.
Journaling with God
Carry whatever you noticed in your body into your journal.
Where am I asking God for words when perhaps I am being invited to notice movement?
Where in my relationship with God do I experience the ease of dancing, and where am I wrestling?
What desire keeps returning within me, and what happens when I bring it into relationship with God rather than immediately judging it or acting upon it?
A Closing Prayer
Loving God, teach me the cadence of Your presence. When I misunderstand, help me remain. When I wrestle, meet me there. Make me pliable enough to lead and to follow, to question and to listen, trusting the relationship that holds every movement. Teach me to dance with You. Amen.
From the garden within me to the garden within you, where God awaits,
Kimi
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