Dancing at church

As I've shared here before, one of the reasons I agreed to keep coming to church with Biffle and Maybelle was because of the religious education program at the Charleston Unitarian Universalist congregation.  The religious education director is fantastic, and she's helped to create an environment that is entirely comfortable for kids and their parents.

Earlier this week, she emailed me and a bunch of other parents asking if our daughters wanted to take part in some dancing at the beginning of this morning's church service.  I believe the phrase she used was "graceful spinning down the aisle."  She knows Maybelle well, so I emailed her back and said that Maybelle loves to dance, but that she'd be equally likely to get Maybelle running down the aisle yelling, "Dance!  Dance!" as gracefully spinning.  She said absolutely Maybelle should take part.

So this morning we shared with Maybelle that she'd be dancing at church.  She loves going to church, and she loves dancing, and it was pretty clear that she got the excitement of both of these things going together.  As we were getting our bikes loaded up, Maybelle stood on the front porch saying, "Go to church!  Dance!  Dance!"

She and the other kids had a great time, and the teenager who was "choreographing" the dance was a good sport about the fact that not many of the kids were paying attention to her.  Maybelle did a wonderful job, particularly considering that she was the youngest kid up there (getting great support from some of the older kids).  Please notice her stunning fall-to-the-ground, diaper-exposing dance move at the end. It's possible she decided to insert some of the choreography from "Ring Around a Rosie."


If you want to see more of Maybelle's fun morning at church, click here for the video of Maybelle taking part in the choir rehearsal, which happened right after the dance rehearsal (but before the church service had begun).  These videos give a sense of why I'm so happy with our church.

After church, several people asked me if Maybelle would now expect to dance at every church service.  I'll tell you what I told them:  I have no idea.  We'll find out next week.