Returning to The Dance

Last night I returned to Tuesday Night "Soul Motion: Terrain" dance. I was feeling a bit fearful to return for some strange reason. Feeling that my place with the community had somehow dissolved, that I would no longer be known? All baseless fears as usual. The moment I entered the skylight filled cork floored new dance space, I immediately felt at home. I was embraced first by Winky, and as all the familiar faces began to dance in and embrace me with comfort and a love that comes from knowing each other in a very special way, I knew that it was time to return.  We each blindly picked a line from Wild Geese by Mary Oliver to read out of sequence to the others before beginning the dance. My line was wonderful and oh so meaningful as it revealed itself to me. My line was, "love what it loves". I danced in the spirit of knowing that there is a higher power that loves me, to love what "it" loves is to love myself. I also danced the words of the others. I did have to carve out a safe space to dance while protecting my splint encased wrist, which did force me to keep my eyes open. That made me observe the other dancers a bit more and kept me from fully falling inward, but that is the dance of now, not the dance of forever. After moving to a point of sweating emotional and physical tiredness, there was stillness and Winky read the poem in it's entirety. The poem selected could not have been any more perfect. Beautiful............I can't wait to return again next Tuesday to the dance of "that day" hopefully more accepting and more in love with myself as I am, at this time, in this body, in this moment.....

Wild Geese 

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

                                                                  ~~Mary Oliver~~