{"id":9628,"date":"2026-01-27T22:21:28","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T02:21:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=9628"},"modified":"2026-01-27T22:21:28","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T02:21:28","slug":"the-sacred-dance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=9628","title":{"rendered":"The Sacred Dance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Armas1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Armas1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-9629\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Armas1.jpg 800w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Armas1-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Armas1-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Armas1-640x480.jpg 640w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Armas1-400x300.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When we believe the divine wills something absolutely, we stop wrestling with the complexity of the world.  It&#8217;s how dualism still thrives in religious spaces today.  I&#8217;ve felt it in many church settings &#8211; the pressure to see my own will as something to be set aside, to understand my desires as inherently in conflict with God&#8217;s.  What I wanted, thought, or felt was always considered at odds with the divine.  It wasn&#8217;t a both\/and but an either\/or.  Either God was at work or I was.  This set up a relentless internal tension, not just with God but with myself.<\/p>\n<p>But the more I immersed myself in Scripture, the more I saw that God isn&#8217;t at war with humanity.  The stories we find there aren&#8217;t about a battle of wills but about a sacred dance &#8211; about God and humans moving together in harmony, creating something holy.  This reframing shifted something deep within me, reminding me that the religious life isn&#8217;t a struggle for control but a movement of grace and love.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; Kat Armas, <em>Liturgies for Resisting Empire<\/em>, p. 105-106<\/p>\n<p>Photo: Icy lake, South Riding, Virginia, January 26, 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When we believe the divine wills something absolutely, we stop wrestling with the complexity of the world. It&#8217;s how dualism still thrives in religious spaces today. I&#8217;ve felt it in many church settings &#8211; the pressure to see my own will as something to be set aside, to understand my desires as inherently in conflict [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,13,24,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","category-god","category-guidance","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9628"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9630,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9628\/revisions\/9630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}