The Dance

One of my sisters recently came across a good book called the Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer. I have not read / heard it yet because the library has it on travel for me. I did already pick up her newest book called The Dance. I only started reading it last night when I was awaken by a late night phone call.

The intro poem is as follows:

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,
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, every day.

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...someday.
Show me you can risk being completely at peace,
truly okay 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.

- - - -
Wow that poem spoke to me on many different levels. I can't wait to read the rest of the book and get The Invitation that she also wrote. I have heard some passages from this book as well and it sounds GREAT.

If I had to pick one part of the poem that speaks the loudest to me right now it is...let us remind each other that it is never about the money. Recently, I had an opportunity to go in to a very lucrative business opportunity and I turned it down. When I became VERY clear again that my whole life has never been about the money it was an easy choice. The hard part of the choice was that I had to pass up the opportunity to work with two VERY powerful coaches/partners. I will have the opportunity to work with one of them again in the future but this was the hard part for me. It was never about the money. I decided to go in to my own seminar and coaching business again instead and turn my stock/option trading back to my husband. As I have said, I'll offer some tech stuff and some not tech stuff but it is, was and never will be about the money for me. I'll even offer coaching to my favorite people. I have to have something that gets me up in the morning. Even when I don't feel like it...especially when I don't feel like it. My communities of friends, students, partners etc. are what gets me up every day and I will dance to this music as long as I live God willing.

That's all for today.

In joyful partnership,

Cathy Oberkampf

cathy.the.teacher@gmail.com

P.S. Sorry for the word wrap problem but I tried to re-create this poem as accurately as possible and my blog won't handle longer lines with out wrapping to the next line.