Just ONE of THOSE Days!!!

Got home and knew...I dropped my bag inside the door, went to the bedroom to change into walking clothes. Walked back toward the front door grabbing some items along the way: mala beads, sharpie marker, post-its, ipod, water and keys.

Out the front door and head phones in and I hit play angrily. I am heavy today. I provided support to so many today and yet I am certain that some do not see the value or the worth. I am disappointed. I am angry. I am almost at the top of the hill before I realize where I am, as I pause at the red light I feel the anger coursing through my veins. My feet are heavy and my legs are wobbly but I press on and push through the fear of knee pain from earlier in the day.

My breathing quickens and the sweat is beading on my body and tears stinging, threatening to fall but I hold them back. I trade smiles with a lady walking in the other direction. My body eases into a rhythm...I am at the gate to the park. Oh, the world is heavy on me today and yet I keep moving.

The park seems magical today. The lush green trees open their arms and seem to wrap me in love. The leaves seem to envelope me, pushing me along the path and silence surrounds me in the midst of all the swirling action. Just as I start to think how fat and hideous I am I hear the gentle whispers all around start to swirl around my head. Messages of hope, love and support. The most beautiful little girl is biking up the hill and as we pass we connect and her smile fills me with all I need.

I am worthy. I AM.

I breath deeply and get to the cut through and up the hill...longing for my bench. Today...one of those days...my bench is full of teenagers and I am disappointed. Breathing deeply and continuing to walk towards what is next.

I come to rest at the table under the tree. I pull out my post-its and begin to write. I pull out my beads and meditate on the knowledge that I am worthy. I am resting under the tree, sun shining down on me and am joined by an orange spider who quickly gets flicked away. I think to myself, you have a job to do little spider, go do it. I smile and realize that I have a job to do and go do it.

It's just one of those days! And "those" days go away with transforming walks and being open to the support of the universe.

Namaste.

The Dance

The Dance

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 live.
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 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.

© Oriah Mountain Dreamer, from the book The Dance, HarperSanFrancisco, 2001