Friday, July 14, 2006

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?

Show me how you take care of business
without letting business determine who you are.

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.

excerpt from "The Dance" by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

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