This weekend
I participated in my first InterPlay event –
something called an “Untensive,” three days of moving and standing still, on my
own, with a partner, and with a crowd. This experience, which sounds mundane as
I write these words, was anything but. Something broke wide open in me as I
moved through my stories and others’, through forms danced and witnessed with
inspiration and spontaneity – with tears and shouts and sighs – that connected Spirit
with Body with Mind.
But the
biggest surprise has come to me in my sleep. I’ve been waking in the middle of
the night with ecstatic dreams. This morning I woke about 4 am with a dream so
vivid I wish I could dance it here rather than describe it.
I was standing
up in a Quaker Meeting for Worship, where we usually sit quietly, and
occasionally share words. I was boldly lifting my arms, looking to the heavens,
exclaiming about the bits of cosmos that were showering down on us, the charged
particles of light that fell upon and into us, electrifying the cells of our
bodies, causing our very bones to burn bright.
I turned into the center of the
worship circle and sank, a folded leaf onto the cork floor, laid my forehead
and palms on the coolness, felt the pulsing energy of the fiery earth core deep
beneath and within. Sang to Mother Earth my thanksgiving for magnetizing us to
herself, keeping us close, saving us from being flung into empty space. The
curling tendrils of green energy rising incessantly through the crust of ancient
and recent history. The wet films of microbes blooming in the dirt, digesting our
garbage to make rich, black soil for green life. Colonizing our intestines and
our lungs, our eyes and our mouths, to create these walking, talking hybrids of
human and microbial cells – us, the species we call human beings.
I danced the
passion, the zest, the big J JOY of Life – falling, rising, showering,
tendriling, filling, flowing, loving, holding, leaving, making – this awesome
miracle that dances around and inside us 24/7!
We are aware
of this moving, ecstatic, miracle of Light and Life – when? When our babies are
born, when we make love with ourselves or with others, when we stand firm
against injustice, when our pets curl up on our laps, when a storm rips through
our towns, when a loved one is felled by violence or mishap. At those times, it
is possible to feel Aliveness and the preciousness of being Alive. Maybe at
those times we can even dance in and on behalf of Life.
But most of
the time, nearly all of the time, for the limitless tiny moments that lie between
the Big Moments, for nearly all of our lives…..
don’t we sleep through the whole
thing?
