What if God danced?
- guamconservatory
- Dec 27, 2025
- 6 min read
Updated: Jan 2
Modern technology has led to many conveniences but it has also left us feeling increasingly isolated with a diminished sense of community. Off-line reality has given way to virtual reality, changing the synaptic network responses in our brains and addicting us to our next dopamine hit. Meanwhile, households seem to never get enough 'family time', and children are left trying to navigate through a world of confusion and noise, often being babysat by their smart devices. The moral norms of the past seem nonexistent today and children are caught between the standards their parents have set for them and the realities of social media's influence. Surely, it is easy for our children to become overwhelmed and anxious. But what if God created in each person the means to exorcise frustrations and confusion so that peace could be found? And what if the "means" God gives us-- especially to children-- come through the desire of self-expression, namely through dancing, singing, playing a musical instrument, creating art or using one's body in an extraordinary way? What if God danced?
When I Run, I Feel His Pleasure
In the classic movie, Chariots of Fire, the Olympic runner and devout Christian, Eric Liddell, replies to his sister who tries to persuade him away from his pursuit of running. Eric says, "When I run, I feel His pleasure." The Bible speaks of God giving gifts to each one of us, gifts he will never take back. The biblical passage primarily concerns itself with gifts that are to be used to exhort and encourage believers and to help grow the church. However, it is undeniable that God has endowed certain people with special gifts and talents for which there is no explanation or logical origin. It is my firm belief that God bestows creative desires to children so they can express His pleasure and so they can therapeutically work through the issues of their lives in a constructive and artistic manner.
Navigating Child Cruelty
Like most children living in suburban or urban centers, I was not exempt from being exposed to the stresses of peer-pressures that were designed to coerce conformity to high-risk behaviors such as drug use, teen age sex, and crime. As a youngster, however, I accepted that I was different from most, and that I was marching to the beat of my own drum. It wasn't in me to play along to another's cacophony, Where I sensed kids being cruel, I steered clear. Where kids occupied themselves with popularity contests, I chose not to compete. Out of default, I appeared a loner but in reality, I was merely preferring my own company than to those whose acceptance of me was conditional. Additionally, issues in my family's household filled parts of my childhood with fear and uncertainty, keeping me a bed-wetter until adolescence.
The Saving Grace of Music and Dance
Playing a musical instrument was introduced early during my formative years as a child. My older siblings were given sporadic piano lessons and I would take my first piano lesson at the age of 7 on the island of Guam. The teachers were mean and nearly abusive, especially when it came to keeping your nails short and keeping your fingers curved when playing scales. However, my desire to play piano would not die. When my family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, my brother was learning guitar and my sister began taking dance lessons. When boys at elementary school teased me because I "threw a ball like a girl," I realized group sports weren't for me. For other reasons, I felt uncomfortable around groups of boys so the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts weren't options that appealed to me. To avoid hiring a sitter to keep watch over me during this time, my mother would occasionally have me accompany my sister to her dance class to wait in the lobby during her lessons. Eventually, there were other brothers waiting for their sisters in the lobby and the studio's director asked if we wanted to learn tap dance. We looked at each other and replied back, "Why not." I took quickly to tap dancing, and several years later, I began to pursue ballet training. Simultaneously, my mother enrolled me and my sister into organ lessons and then more piano lessons.
During the Night
Teen age years are typically ones filled with angst; mine were no different. However, when I was filled with stress, fear and confusion, I didn't join a gang, I didn't find a drug dealer, and I didn't look to hook-up with someone to relieve myself. I ran to the piano in the living room. I turned off all the lights but kept the lamp atop the piano turned on. I played my heart out, I sang my lungs out, I composed original songs, and I cathartically blood-let all my anxieties and apprehensions until I came to the end of myself and gave all my stress to God. To me, these experiences felt holy and sacred and I was left convinced that God heard me and that God loved me. Each time the moment required it, I repeated this practice. Read any Psalm in the Old Testament and you will discover David blood-letting his worries and fears to God until he came to a place of surrender and arrived at a place of trust.
Art as Therapy
Whether in a clinical setting or not, individuals who make music or who dance, sing, draw, paint, sculpt inadvertently create for themselves an outlet for self-expression and a venue wherein to understand their thoughts, emotions and experiences. The very process of "artistic activity helps to build insight, to increase emotional regulation, and to support healing, especially when traditional talk therapy feels too limited or difficult to access," says Attiya Awadalla, LCAT, ATR-BC, a therapist with Lenora Art Therapy and Counseling, Art therapy continues to grow as a therapeutic discipline but your child may not need to attend therapy to gain the benefits of 'art therapy'. If the outlet of self-expression is what you seek for your child, and you are also wanting the experience to be educational, search out arts schools whose programs are progressive and where the teachers are qualified in the fields they represent. Look for teachers who integrate the sacred into the arts. Arts training should not solely be technical, nor should it merely be an opportunity to vent (although venting might have its place from time to time). Arts training should provide the student with a foundation for which s/he can be exposed to the technical challenges of the art form, develop the discipline to embody the art form, and to create something meaningful that enhances the artist's life as well as the spectator's life.
God and the Arts.
The idea of God and the arts are well illustrated throughout many religious texts. The Christian tradition shows God creating humankind in His Own image. What image is that? It is the image of 'Creator.' God creates. When we create something-- especially something of beauty or something that inspires and exhorts viewers to lift their thoughts heavenward, we are doing the work of God.
"All music should have no other end and aim than the glory of God and the soul's refreshment; where this is not remembered, there is no real music but only a devilish hubbub." -Johann Sebastian Bach
The Psalms are resplendent of the calls for artistic expression. Psalm 149:3: "Let them praise His name with dancing and make music to him with tambourine and harp." Psalm 150 is a breathtaking exhortation to praise and worship using every available instrument, e.g., trumpet, lyre, harp, tambourine, strings, flutes and cymbals. "Let everything that has breath, praise the Lord."
Summary
If God has gifted your child with the the desire to dance, sing, or play a musical instrument for the express purpose of giving Him glory and in the process, the same gift is designed to provide solace to your child in times of life's storms, why wouldn't you do all that you can to give your child the opportunity to pursue the arts? It begins with a desire. Then a dream. The arts could potentially save your child's life.
For more information about arts programs on Guam, visit GuamConservatory.Org or phone (671) 929-7799 or email us at info@GuamConservatory.Org
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