Theology of the Tango

So I’ve been spending time on a website called Omegle. Omegle is a strange little website, crafted as it as to invite anonymous conversation between two randomly selected partners. This chaos is beautiful in its execution — it’s the thrill of the gamble. You go to the website, make your connection, and you could find yourself speaking with anybody about anything. Much like a slot machine, you lose most of the time. You get trolls prowling for cyber-sex and probably the occasional pedophile. But you can dismiss them easily enough, disconnect from the chat at any time, and try again. And when you win, oh, you win. I’ve found myself in wonderful conversations. I’ve discussed the theology the body as it relates to masturbation with a young man who had asked if I had any porn I wanted to share. I’ve found myself relating over linguistics. I’ve chatted music with a teenager from Germany with pristine English, and religion with a recent college grad who I found quite delightful.

In fact, it was her who pointed me, as we discussed dance, to a fairly old article at Catholicity, called “Tango and the Theology of the Body.” I don’t have appreciably more to add, but I certainly felt the need to share it. So h/t to Danielle for pointing it out to me.

To the observer, following looks like a passive activity. Nothing could be further from the truth. As a follower, I must be ready to go in any direction at any time. My partner might ask me to pivot, step across myself and execute ochos (figure eights), or pause while he crafts figures on the floor by himself like an ice-skater. While the possibilities are endless, the dynamic is always the same: The man invites, the woman responds, and the man receives the woman’s response.

This is exactly how God relates to us. He never forces us to do anything. He constantly invites us to take the next step in Him. The problem is that most of us have very little experience following. We don’t know how to wait. We don’t know how to be sensitive to His lead. We don’t know how to remain in the present rather than yearning for the past or racing to the future. Tango teaches all these skills on a very concrete level, skills that transfer wonderfully into our relationship with Christ.

There’s another reason tango has been good for my Catholic faith, and it has to do with Pope John Paul II’s theology of the body. The pope’s fundamental premise is that the body reveals God. When we look at male and female, the very structure of the body tells us that it’s made for union. Male and male aren’t made for nuptial union. Female and female aren’t made for nuptial union. Only male and female are made for nuptial union.