As much as I love swing dancing (and I do), I adore two-stepping. Two-Step, a country dance, comes from Foxtrot, and, although there are a number of different ways to count and dance it, is typically counted “quick, quick, slow, slow.” Like Foxtrot, Waltz, Quick Step, Polka, and Tango, Two-Step travels counterclockwise along line-of-dance, which is the imaginary “loop” or “track” that’s laid out around the perimeter of any dance floor. (Spot dances like Rumba, Cha-Cha, and Swing are danced in the middle of the floor; line-of-dance dances are danced on the outside.) Anyway, there’s just something about two-stepping. Not only do you get to constantly travel around the dance floor, you can also turn or spin around yourself or your partner at the same time.

It’s go-go-go. (Yeehaw.)

Currently it’s two-thirty in the afternoon. Today’s blog is number 450 (in a row), and I’m writing it now because I’m going to a wedding reception this evening and plan to party hardy. The wedding itself was earlier today (at noon), just down the street from our house. (I walked there and back.) And whereas it was a beautiful wedding (truly), it was also a Catholic mass, which means it lasted a long time and involved a lot of standing and sitting, a lot of repeating, “Lord, hear our prayer.” Honestly, it was difficult for me to pay attention. I used to work at weddings as a photographer, and after about a hundred, they stopped being riveting. Plus, today’s mass was mostly in Spanish, and I don’t speak Spanish.

In short, my mind wandered.

Yesterday I wrote about my search for the constellation Cassiopeia, part of my recent fascination with our solar system. I’ve really been wanting to understand why stars and planets move or appear to move the way they do. Last night I looked up a model of the universe online and found a site that shows where the planets currently are. In one diagram, the sun was shown in the middle, in another, the earth. This was extremely enlightening, seeing the universe from both an outside and an on-the-ground perspective, and it really helped me understand why this planet is over here and that planet is over there.

This is all I could think about in church earlier today, the planets and their orbits. Normally planets move through the constellations (the zodiac) on the ecliptic (the planetary racetrack) from west to east, but sometimes they seem to move from east to west. This is called retrograde motion, and I learned last night that it’s an illusion that occurs when a faster moving (inner) planet passes a slower moving (outer) one. This same illusion happens when you speed past someone on the highway. You’re both technically moving forward, but relative to you, the other person or car appears to be moving backwards.

Still trying to get a picture of how the whole thing works, I imagined during the wedding that the sanctuary was our solar system. I thought, What if the sun were in the middle of the room, and I (as the earth) were orbiting around it? What would another planet to the left or right of me look like? What if they were on the other side of the room, “eclipsed” by the sun? And then it hit me–the universe is like a dance floor!–all the planets looping around the sun counterclockwise, each on its own path, some spinning right as they go (Venus, Uranus) and some spinning left (all the others). I thought, It makes perfect sense. Some planets dance solo and others dance with partners (moons).

Like one big cosmic Two-Step.

Yesterday I was reminded of an affirmation that I’m quite fond of–“Everything is happening in divine right order.” To me this means that the planets and yes, even you and I, are on our proper paths. Not that everything is predetermined, but rather that we are all where we are meant to be–the universal dance floor!–and the rules of dance apply. Here it doesn’t matter if you spin right, spin left, dance solo, or grab a partner. What matters is that you’re dancing. Some days you’ll dance quick, some days you’ll dance slow. At times, others will appear to pass you by. Don’t let this upset you. It’s an illusion. We’re all equal on life’s dance floor. Each of us–at best–is simply, fabulously whirling around in circles–circles that have nowhere to go or be other than right here, right now–circles with no beginning and no end.