The Dance

A beautiful and powerful poem that was recommended to me...thought I'd share it with you all...


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.

By the author of the book THE INVITATION. From THE DANCE (published September 2001.) Copyright (c) 2001 by Oriah Mountain Dreamer. All rights reserved.

P.S.

My boyfriend and my cat are both snoring right now. I want to scream.

Can't sleep...

I can't sleep. Again. Lately it's been because I've been so stressed out, by my job, my relationship, my life. Just everything. But now, I finally know what's going on at work, and it's not good. Today I found out that the promotion I worked so hard for, the promotion I absolutely deserve and everyone agrees I deserve isn't happening. Because of "the economy" they say, and because someone in the office recently got an accelerated, unfair, and completely undeserved promotion, despite the fact that I'd be fine without the pay bump and expressed that the promotion was the important part. Because without it, I can't start my career. And because of this girl who went over everyone's head to get what she wanted and manipulated the system, I can't have what I deserve. I mean, I can still get in submissions and if I love something, things can be arranged, but nothing has worked yet and I don't know how it'll pan out if that kind of situation does arise exactly. My bosses said they'd start giving me more work, that they'd come up with authors to transfer over to me so I'm not so bored and unchallenged, but naturally, there are no authors that they can think of to transfer over. EVeryone is either too high profile or is their baby. I don't know what to do. I feel so trapped, so lost. I wanted this more than I've wanted anything in a long time. And I can't have it. No matter what I do, how much effort I make, I can't have it. I spent the last couple hours of work trying to hold it together, not to burst into tears and scream, then spent all evening either crying or staring off into space blankly. I feel asleep for a couple hours with the help of some meds but I woke up 45 minutes ago and now nothing. Even a Tylenol PM isn't helping. My head feels like its going to explode, the tears keep flowing, and I can't seem to stop it or just fall asleep.

A mid-day, somewhat self-pitying rant

I'm so angry at the world these days. Nothing feels right. Nothing's working out the way I'd hoped. Nothing's improving. I wish I didn't care so much. I wish it didn't bother me that no one at work seems to recognize me, and in some cases even know who I am. I wish I wasn't so ambitious. I wish I didn't want to go somewhere, have a real "career." It'd be so much easier just to be content doing whatever to make the money I need to live. Then I could leave this damn city and do it somewhere else and really focus on the things that matter: all the stuff that's NOT just a job. But in that department, I feel at a loss too. I feel like I've lost touch with who I am, what I like, what I care about, everything I used to pride myself on knowing so well just feels like its disappeared. I feel like I've lost most of my friends, like I wouldn't even be able to hold a real conversation with them if I had the chance. I feel alone. I can't even really talk to my family anymore. We have nothing to say to each other. I feel like I have nothing to say to people a lot of the time. Maybe I'm just a boring person. Or maybe I've just forgotten how to be me. I wasn't always like this. I don't know what happened. Or how to fix it.

Mess

The work week is almost over, thank goodness. I've been working surprisingly hard all week, and I just can't do anymore. (Well, except for the revision letter I have to write this weekend somehow.) There's so much going on right now. I'm so overwhelmed I can't even put it into a coherent paragraph.

Work's been insane, as you've gathered by now. I've been doing a good bit of editorial work lately--I just completed the biggest edit I've ever done, and am in the middle of another, but luckily, it's much, muuuuch lighter. On top of that combined with my regular administrative work, my two-year review coming up in a couple weeks. I'm due for promotion and incredibly nervous that circumstances here will prevent it from happening, despite the fact that I deserve it. We just found on two days ago that our imprint is merging with another imprint, creating a new editorial department and new people to report to, none of whom know who I am or what I'm capable of. This doesn't instill the greatest confidence in my situation. Plus, a co-worker got an unfair, unjustified promotion recently, adding even more fuel to my fire. All week I've been leaving here exhausted and ready to curl up in a ball on my floor and cry.

In my personal life, things have been pretty messy too. Relationships are always hard, and so there's that to contend with pretty continuously. Friendships are difficult too, especially when your closest friends are a) so different than you sometimes you have a hard time understanding one another, and/or b) moving across the country. Then there's the feeling that you have no friends at all, because all the people you used to be close with barely talk to you anymore or have gone completely silent. And it's been so long since you've hung out or spoken, it's nearly impossible to pick back up. It's so hard when that happens. I've been thinking about that a lot lately--all my friends who just seem to have fallen off the face of the earth. I know part of it is my own fault--being busy with work; taking care of my sick cat; spending time with my bf when he actually has off from work, which was rare all summer; not being able to really go out because I have no money to spend anywhere; being sick, injured and/or exhausted. It's just been one thing after another and I feel like I'm so distanced from a large number of the people in my life anymore. I don't quite know how to fix it either. Everything just feels a mess.

See? I told you my paragraphs wouldn't be coherent.

Butterflies or lack thereof

We're always taught to believe that butterflies flying around in your stomach is a sign of love and attraction. It's engrained in us to associate those things together and when they don't unfold exactly as we're told they will, it's terrifying. We worry if something is wrong with us or wrong with the relationship. If no butterflies = wrong. But it doesn't, not necessarily.

My friend Kelly sent me this great msn.com article about just this topic today. Take a look:

Are Butterflies in the Belly Really a Sign of Love?

After a series of bad relationships, one woman put a moratorium on
belly-dwelling winged insects, avoiding any man who even mildly affected her
pulse. Which didn't really work, until a great guy sort of snuck up on her....

My boyfriend has given me a lot in the year-and-a-half we've been together: a belly rub when I ate an entire pepperoni pizza in one sitting, a flat-screen TV when my '80s model finally self-destructed, plus the usual jewelry, cards, and flowers. The one thing he never gave me was butterflies.Since sixth grade, the best way for me to gauge my attraction to a guy has been to check for a sense of anxiety bordering on torture, an ache that signals the countless ways in which I consider him out of my league — and thus worth pining for. It peaked in my 20s, when I met the black Dylan McKay — a sinewy, brooding, inscrutable bad boy.

Read the rest of the story HERE

Dreaming

Wouldn't it be nice if life were just a little bit simpler? If there weren't 800 contributing factors to everything and things weren't always so confusing? If maybe, just once, there was some clarity to life? I sure think so... 

It seems these days that no matter what I do, no matter how many times I talk about things or analyze things or try to forget about things and hope they go away, nothing changes. Because despite all the new things I realize or old things I re-realize, nothing is ever simply the answer. So you kind of have to just try all the possible answers and see what happens. Trial and error. But everything is so much work, takes so much energy and faith and fear. And you can never know if what you're doing is the right thing until it goes horribly awry or, well, doesn't. 

I know the important part of life is the "journey" not the "destination" and all that jazz, but it'd be nice if life could deal a hand that I knew was moving toward the destination, a hand that didn't have the power to hurt me or someone else, but just pointed me in the right direction and made sure I'm going on the right journey. And I know that's silly and impossible and would defeat the whole purpose, but sometimes I just really wish I knew how things were going to turn out. Then maybe it wouldn't be so hard making the decisions of how to get there or be so scary to gear up to try again at something that isn't working and make a fresh start.

Sorry. I'm just dreaming, I guess.