This poem is dedicated to my tribe. Thank you ladies for taking my hand and dancing with me and teaching me to do the same.
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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,
Spiraling 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 okey 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
The 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 but from within.
Don't say, "Yes!"
Just take my hand and dance with me.
by Oriah Mountain
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