The Dance
The Dance - Digital Art by Michele Walker
Reading an except from Gayle Boss's book All Creation Waits: The Advent Mystery Of New Beginnings she is reflecting on walking in the woods and coming across a Nativity-scene shaped manger saying "I suspected the four children living in the house nearby. Outdoors often, aided by their parents, they play games in the woods involving lightsabers, capes, and crowns. They are still seers." I burst into tears. A great welling of grief for the world of adults and the children who will soon become blind. I know this is a great sweeping statement. I know there are adults in this world who are also still seers but I believe that most are blind or at least have cataracts.
I have been there, blind, disconnected from the beauty, wisdom, and truth of the natural world and those more than human beings that want to show us a way home but first we need to remember how to be seers. The noise and the clatter of the must do's and have to's are so loud they are blinding to all else. The loss of senses happens slowly, as children we can mute those must do's and have to's but as we grow we are conditioned to listen to the clatter rather than the whispers of those more than human who want us to wander into the forest, grassland, desert, to sit near water, to listen to the wind song, to still so we can see - with all our senses.
T.S. Elliot in his poem Burnt Norton reflects on time and the still point of the turning world:
"At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time."
"at the still point, there the dance is... Except for the point, the still point,/There would be no dance, and there is only the dance." That is where we become seers again at the still point; when we can see the dance of the mother who holds us, the beings who dance with her, with one another and with us. It is at the still point that we can hear the whispers and then we are able to hear a song, the song of the deep longings your soul sings to you and in that moment the dance begins.