God Is Great—and Sweet

"I would believe only in a god who could dance," wrote German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. During his times, God was generally portrayed as a frozen perfection—remote, static, and wholly unsociable. No wonder Nietzsche was disillusioned. He might have been pleasantly surprised to hear about Krishna, the God who dances with spellbinding expertise on the hoods of the venomous serpent Kaliya; the God who dances to the tune of His mother just to get butter; the God who dances with the gopis during the rasa-lila, a celebration of divine love; the God known as Vrindavana-natabara, the best dancer in the pastoral paradise of Vrindavana.