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.
Oriah Mountain Dreamer
By the author of the book THE INVITATION. Excerpted with permission from
THE DANCE (to be published September 2001). Copyright (c) 2001 by Oriah Mountain
Dreamer. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in whole or in part without
the permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 10 E. 53 St., New York
NY 10022
