Planning dance parties like a (Christian) Stoic

When I was very young, I enjoyed a lot of drama. It added spice, i.e. dopamine, to life before we all got hooked on the internet. Books provided Laurie’s unrequited love for Jo, and television served up the helicopter chases of “Scarecrow and Mrs. King.” Real-life drama, e.g. who didn’t get invited to Randy’s birthday party and why, was less pleasant, and now I actively dislike it.

A Guide to the Good Life in this Vale of Tears

However, drama is inevitable in this vale of tears, so I have been reading what the Stoics have to say about facing it all with equanimity. One helpful Stoic tool is the notion of the dichotomy (developed by William B. Irvine in his A Guide to the Good Life into the trichotomy) of control.

This concept will be familiar to anyone who has read or prayed the Serenity Prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. In short, it is the recognition that there are things beyond our control, and there are things within our control. (Irvine adds that there are things partly within our control, and partly not.)

The Stoics counsel their readers not to worry about the things we can’t do anything about, and to concern ourselves only with those things which we can control. Those controllable things are our character, our opinions, and our choices, including how we respond to people and external events. (Our heath is usually something we can do something about, but we can’t control it completely, so that would belong to Irvine’s third circle of concern.)

The Stoics also counsel detachment from worldly things that can be taken from us or that we want terribly, even though they–like a Georgian house in Edinburgh’s New Town–are beyond our grasp. They even advise occasionally imagining that we have lost what (and who) we do have so we appreciate them better while we have them. Meanwhile, the Stoics believe we should value our own virtue above all earthly things which, although not exactly Christianity, is certainly common ground.

Pesky free will

You are probably wondering what all this has to do with planning dance parties, so I will now get to that. First of all, dance parties are partly within your control and largely outside your control. You can, with more or less work and money, find a suitable space, engage teachers (or prepare yourself to teach), send invitations to carefully selected guests, bake cookies, buy squash, brew coffee, and turn up, but you can’t make anyone else come. This is not in your control.

The incident of nobody turning up to a carefully planned dance party (complete with waiting teachers) would be so crushing to all but the most Stoic of hostesses that one should find out in advance if this is likely to happen. If it is likely to happen, then she shouldn’t have the party. If there are no guests, the hostess cannot exercise the virtue very much in her control: hospitality.

That said, as long as the hostess is not alone in the space, she can (and must) be hospitable to whomever is there. She could even, as the saying goes, turn lemons into lemonade. The teacher who has been told to expect a dozen pupils and finds herself with only one could be invited by the blushing hostess to give her a master class, as it were.

Prayer is helpful

God, of course, is (that is, can be, as He leaves room for human freedom) in charge of everything, so even though you know (I hope) that you can not herd the youth of your parish into your dance hall like so many sheep, you can certainly pray that they turn up. You can also pray that you get roughly equal numbers of young men and young ladies. You should pray that, no matter what happens, you will rise to the challenge and attain new heights of hospitality.

Stoic virtue is a work in progress, so I have not yet given up nagging potential guests and remonstrating with the ones who change their minds at the last minute. However, I have stopped nagging about RSVPs, so that’s an improvement.

To sum up, you can plan your dance party to the best of your ability, but you can’t control the outcome. Fortunately you can control the most important aspect, which is your exercise of the virtue of hospitality. Instead of hankering for the mighty throng you expected, you must devote yourself to the enjoyment of anyone who does come.

Men: 5, Women: 0

I received a very good lesson in this from a veteran ballroom dance teacher the Sunday we found ourselves with five charming and talented young men and no women. I murmured an embarrassed apology to the teacher, who declared that this was no problem at all, collected up the boys, and led them down the Line of Dance. They looked like the Jets in West Side Story, only better dressed.

Young ladies turned up while the boys were having their leads’ workshop, so we had our turn with the teacher afterwards, and the young men all had a chance to dance with us. Thus everything worked out, and there were 8 women to 12 men the next time.

While unending ages run

While thinking about how many dance parties I am likely to hold in future, that line just popped into my head.

It seemed important, so I wrote it down and looked it up. It is from J.M. Neale’s hymn “Christ is made the sure foundation” (a translation of Angularis Fundamentum). It describes the co-eternity of the Blessed Trinity, and perhaps it appeared in the forefront of my teeming brain for two reasons.

First, as I was just reminded by this charming online reflection, hospitality was the virtue Abraham and Sarah exercised towards three visitors who have been depicted as a trinitarian theophany of God, like so:

Thus, we can say that the first revelation of the Triune God happened at a party–the party of a childless old married couple to boot!

2. Second, the Anglo-Saxon author of The Dream of the Rood caught my fancy forever by describing heaven as a place “where the Lord’s host is seated at the feast, with ceaseless bliss.” In short, the Anglo-Saxons among our ancestors in faith believed there’s a party going on in heaven; I can easily imagine there is dancing, too.

Laud and honor to the Father;
Laud and honor to the Son;
Laud and honor to the Spirit;
Ever Three, and ever One:
Consubstantial, co-eternal,
While unending ages run!