The Dance

I put this into a card for Jordan and have always resonated with it. In the energy of my own doubt about love, in memory of yet another of my friends' relationships that has "shifted" and in celebration of my two month-a-versary with Jo and the demons in me that our joining seems to invite out to play....i give you the following...

The Dance by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

I have sent you my invitation,
the note inscribed on the palm of my hand by the fire of living.
Don't jump up and shout, "Yes, this is what I want! Let's do it!"
Just stand up quietly and dance with me.

Show me how you follow your deepest desires,
spiralling down into the ache within the ache.
And I will show you how I reach inward and open outward
to feel the kiss of the Mystery, sweet lips on my own, everyday.

Don't tell me you want to hold the whole world in your heart.
Show me how you turn away from making another wrong
without abandoning yourself
when you are hurt and afraid of being unloved.

Tell me a story of who you are,
And see who I am in the stories I am living.
And together we will remember that each of us always has a choice.

Don't tell me how wonderful things will be . . . some day.
Show me you can risk being completely at peace,
truly OK with the way things are right now in this moment,
and again in the next and the next and the next. . .

I have heard enough warrior stories of heroic daring.
Tell me how you crumble when you hit the wall,
the place you cannot go beyond by the strength of your own will.
What carries you to the other side of that wall,
to the fragile beauty of your own humanness?

And after we have shown each other how we have set and kept
the clear, healthy boundaries that help us live side by side with each other,
let us risk remembering that we never stop silently loving
those we once loved out loud.

Take me to the places on the earth that teach you how to dance,
the places where you can risk letting the world break your heart.
And I will take you to the places
where the earth beneath my feet
and the stars overhead make my heart whole again and again.

Show me how you take care of business
without letting business determine who you are.
When the children are fed but still the voices within and around us
shout that soul's desires have too high a price,
let us remind each other that it is never about the money.

Show me how you offer to your people
and the world the stories and the songs you want our children's children to remember,
and I will show you how I struggle not to change the world,
but to love it.

Sit beside me in long moments of shared solitude,
knowing both our absolute aloneness and our undeniable belonging.
Dance with me in the silence and in the sound of small daily words,
holding neither against me at the end of the day.

And when the sound of all the declarations
of our sincerest intentions has died away on the wind,
dance with me
in the infinite pause before the next great inhale of the breath
that is breathing us all into being,
not filling the emptiness from the outside or from within.

Don't say, "Yes!" Just take my hand and dance with me.

Looooooooooooooove that piece. Love it. My depression is subsiding. I think my slowly renewed energy is coming from realizing that what i must do is give notice here at work. I promised myself that i wouldn't stay if i ever started to dread coming to work in the morning and that day has arrived. Do i know what i will make money doing instead? No. Is it logical to quit a well paying, cushy position when there are bills to pay? No. Do i have a master plan that answers the what next? Not really. But i have faith and know that whatever i need will be supplied to me. Just look what happenned last year. I will not allow my soul's desires to have too high a price.

And i desire to let someone else order the office supplies.

Thanks Oriah.