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.
