For the love of the dance

Always begin again. The Rules of St. Benedict

Sometime ago, my blog sister Maureen at Writing Without Paper, led me to a wonderful blog, "Abby of the Arts". Through The Abby, I am entering into a Lenten study of practicing, Lectio Divina. What I am calling "My Contemplative Journey Into God Within Me".

This morning, I began the first lesson. Chrstine Valters Painter, founder of Abby of the Arts, in her opening commentary encourages each of us to remember St. Benedict's rule, "Always begin again."

She goes on to share a passage from Thomas Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation, which I found incredibly powerful and moving.

The world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity, and despair.

But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Indeed we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not.

Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance.

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

C.C. and I have been having deep conversation about 'silence'. My feathers have been ruffled, my peace of mind disturbed as I have opened myself up to surrender. My ego. My 'truth'. My certainty that I know the answer before the question ever begins to dance in the silence between us. I have had to fall into that place of deep listening within me to understand what is being said. I have had to silence my inner chatter, that monkey mind who wants to override and overrule whatever another says, so that I can embrace that place where his worldview enlightens mine without struggling to usurp his knowing of what is true for him with my desire to make what is true for me 'his' or 'ours'.

As the saying goes, Disagreement does not equal rejection.

How one person hears, or sees, or believes the world to be is not cause for disruption nor to feeling rejected, unless I make it so.

Our conversation, and my contemplation of the word, 'silence' have led me into a deeply 'disruptive peace'. That place where I rub up against my ego's demands for what it wants to be true for the world around me, regardless of the truth of the world around me.

Yesterday, I asked Am I willing to:

Be Love.
Feel Love.
Give Love.
Receive Love.
Know Love.
Share Love.
Stand in Love.
Act in Love.
Speak in Love.
Be in LOVE.

I cannot be present in Love when I stand in my ego's defense of my wants, needs, desires. I cannot be present in Love when what I want takes precedence over what another desires.

To co-exist in that space between my wants:your wants without overshadowing one with the other, is the dance of Love.

I am learning the steps. I am not yet walking with grace and ease. I am allowing myself to live in the discomfort of not knowing the steps in my willingness to begin to dance. I am letting the music of Love fill my heartbeat with its rhythm of being at one with my holy spirit dancing to the tune of life.

There is nothing my holy spirit cannot do.

May I, as Merton suggests, 'forget myself on purpose, cast my awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance."

And in my dance, may I be joined in Love to those I love so that we may know the joy of dancing simply for the love of dance.

May I always begin again, to dance.

Nameste.