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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.
Oriah
Mountain Dreamer
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