I’m not much of a dancer. I did win a line dancing contest once, but my competition was the theology faculty at the seminary for which I taught. This is a little like playing members of the marching band in a game of horse. I didn’t have to be good to win. And I wasn’t. I’m not.

I’d like to be good at it because it involves music. I’d like to experience a live band the way my wife does, moving freely and stylishly to the performance. I’m probably too Church-of-Christ-white-boy to be good at it. Too many generations of “can’t go to dances” have altered the generational DNA. It’s just not in us. And if I decide to “dance like no one’s watching,” I’m pretty sure I look like an enthusiastic Elaine Benes.

Still, there are songs that move me physically. I find myself moving in spite of myself. Aretha’s “Chain of Fools,” the Beatles version of “Twist and Shout,” Wilson Pickett’s “Mustang Sally,” the opening guitar licks to “Yellow Ledbetter” (Pearl Jam), “Reeling in the Years” (Steely Dan), and “Rocky Mountain Way” (Joe Walsh), and if I’m honest, “Uptown Funk” (Bruno Mars) and “Blame it on the Boogie” (Michael Jackson). All of these, and many others, make my head bob in what Billy Crystal calls “the white man’s overbite.”

I was at Yale a few years ago for a conference on human flourishing and heard Willie James Jennings talk about joy. He referred to joy as an act of resistance opposed to despair. One example he gave was the practice of slaves in “hush harbors,” secret places of worship in which joy was expressed as an act of resistance to the “given” of slavery. In that place, their bodies were their own. The experience of the hush harbor included bodies in motion and music, expressions of joy.

A few years ago, I taught an undergraduate course for ministry majors, and we began each class session with music. The only stipulation I placed on participation was that some part of their body had to be moving as the music played. It was a semester long exercise in embarrassment. They didn’t know what to do with their bodies. I shared their embarrassment. We had no joy. Their was no resistance to despair in our hush harbor.

A few years later, my friend, Mallory Wyckoff and I taught a late night class at the Pepperdine University Bible Lectures (now called Harbor) using Jennings’ material. While the Pepperdine crowd tends to be slightly more hip than other “lectureship” crowds, there were still plenty of cardigans and sensible shoes in the room. Little did they know what was in store for them.

We had them identify occasions for despair in their lives, to hold them for a moment, and then to resist them through joy in the experience of music. We played two songs, one chosen by each of us. I chose “Chain of Fools,” the Aretha song that gets me to move. Mallory choose a song by her pretend boyfriend, Justin Timberlake. (Get help, Mallory).

We again stipulated that the one rule for participation was that some part of their body had to be in motion. A head bob, a toe tap, rhythmic clapping–any bodily movement. When the music started, people were slow to comply. A few moved into the aisles to dance. There were four older women sitting together toward the front who were having none of this nonsense. But as Aretha continued to sing, I urged people to resist the despair they had identified earlier in the evening. Like an evangelist urging a response during the singing of “Just as I Am,” I called on them to resist despair with their bodies. And I swear you could feel the release in the room. Now everyone, save the four women, were dancing. It was beautiful. Most of them were no better dancers than me, but there they were resisting despair. They hadn’t danced since 10th grade, but there they were practicing joy in our own hush harbor. There were tears and smiles and laughter. It was an amazing moment.

And then the song changed to Mallory’s boyfriend. And maybe the four women were just waiting for the right song, but they began to move. I actually don’t think it had anything to do with Justin Timberlake. They were swept up into the moment. But, wait for it…wait…

They started a conga line! As God is my witness! Now we had a conga line winding its way through Pepperdine’s Stauffer Chapel. It was unadulterated, over the boundaries, joy. It may very well be the only conga line ever spontaneously formed at a Church of Christ event. I know this, the gates of hell had no chance of prevailing in this moment.

This is the power of music. It evokes more than appreciation. It does more than soothe the soul. It moves the body, and in doing so produces joy. For me, this is certainly true of the way rock and roll moves through me, I remember as a boy the scandal that Elvis’ swinging hips produced among those self-deputized to protect society from such lurid impulses. If Elvis appeared on television, they would shoot him only from the waist up. The body in motion was only a symbol for sex, for lisciviousness, for waywardness. We had no hush harbors, and ironically this was our slavery. We didn’t know what to do with our bodies. We had purity, but no joy. We let despair run amok for lack of a conga line.

I think I’ll go put on some Bruno Mars.