Advice
Someone dancing inside us
learned only a few steps:
the “Do-Your-Work” in 4/4 time.
the “What-Do-You-Expect” waltz.
He hasn’t noticed yet the woman
standing away from the lamp,
the one with dark eyes
who knows the rhumba
and strange steps in jumpy rhythms
from the mountains in Bulgaria.
If they dance together,
something unexpected will happen.
If they don’t, the next world
will be a lot like this one.
— Bill Holm
Though few had actually witnessed it, it was common knowledge that Brother Weeps’ favorite way to pray was to dance. A half-mile walk deep into the forest from his hermitage, he had discovered among the trees a clearing in the shape of a nearly perfect circle. Because the evergreen trees were so tall and so full, the clearing only received direct light from the sun by day and the moon by night when either disc was straight above his sacred ring. Many a morning accompanied by the calls of birds, many a noon in the cold or heat of the day, and many a night under the moon in this sacred wooded space Brother Weeps offered his prayer—at times simple and slow, at times fiery and exuberant—with the graceful movement of his body and the beat of his heart aligned with the movement of the Spirit and attuned to the beating heart of God.
♦ ⊕ ♦ ⊕ ♦
One afternoon while teaching, Brother Weeps said, “If we cannot participate—and he emphasized participate—in the life of the Ineffable One we call God, then whatever or whomever we are worshiping, it is not God. God is not, never was, and never will be some inert, immovable reality. It is the Spirit who moved above the primordial waters, the Spirit Jesus promised to send and did send to his friends after ascending into heaven, and the one same Spirit who penetrated the walls of the upper room, the hearts of those gathered there, and our hearts as well who reminds us of the vivacious, fluid, passionate, and graceful movement of the cosmic dance of love—who is God. The Holy One is both our dance partner and the dance itself.”
Brother Weeps continued, “We were created for one purpose: to participate with our entire being in the dance of love; to do-si-do with the Divine, and consequently, to sashay and promenade with one another in the exchange of life and love in order to assist in making God’s dream come true on earth as it is in heaven.” And here he paused for a moment, then described what surely is one of the—if not the—most important antiphonal moments in a person’s life, saying, “Perhaps the most important Q & A in all of life is the divine request, “Would you like to dance?” And the life-changing human response, “I’d love to.”
© 2022, Dan Miller. All Rights Reserved.
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