"Every society honors it's live conformists and it's dead troublemakers." Mignon McLaughlin

We Have Come To Be Danced

We have come to be danced
Not the jiffy booby, shake your booty for him dance
But the wring the sadness from our skin dance
The blow the chip off our shoulder dance.
The slap the apology from our posture dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the monkey see, monkey do dance
One two dance like you
One two three, dance like me dance
but the grave robber, tomb stalker
Tearing scabs and scars open dance
The rub the rhythm raw against our soul dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the nice, invisible, self-conscious shuffle
But the matted hair flying, voodoo mama
Shaman shakin’ ancient bones dance
The strip us from our casings, return our wings
Sharpen our claws and tongues dance
The shed dead cells and slip into
The luminous skin of love dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the hold our breath and wallow in the shallow end of the floor dance
But the meeting of the trinity, the body breath and beat dance
The shout hallelujah from the top of our thighs dance
The mother may I?
Yes you may take 10 giant leaps dance
The olly olly oxen free free free dance
The everyone can come to our heaven dance.

We have come to be danced
Where the kingdom’s collide
In the cathedral of flesh
To burn back into the light
To unravel, to play, to fly, to pray
To root in skin sanctuary
We have come to be danced
We have come.

by Jewel Mathieson

Teachers

WHO’S ON YOUR LIST?

"Boss, coworker, spouse, roommate, mother, father, child—who are the people you really dislike and wish would simply go away? Be grateful to them: they’re your own special gurus, showing up right on time to keep you honest. It’s the troublemakers in your life who cause you to see that you’ve shut down, that you’ve armored yourself, that you’ve hidden your head in the sand. If you didn’t get angry at them, if you didn’t get fed up with them, you would never be able to cultivate patience. If you didn’t envy them, if you weren’t jealous of them, you would never think to stretch beyond your mean-spiritedness and try to rejoice in their good fortune. If you never met your match, you might think you were better than everybody else and arrogantly criticize their neurotic behavior rather than do something about your own."

(Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change)   Pema Chodron 

The Suburbs

Complaint
Is only possible
While living in the suburbs
Of God.

Hafiz

Life

"I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance to live so that which came to me as seed goes to the next as blossom and that which came to me as blossom goes on as fruit."

Dawna Markova

Feeling

"Feeling is life and death at the same time."  Hazrat Inayat Khan

Effort

"As swimmers dare to lie face to the sky and water bears them, as hawks rest upon air and air sustains them, so would I learn to attain freefall, and float into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace, knowing no effort... earns that all-surrounding grace." --Denise Levertov

Problems

“It is characteristic of all deep human problems that they are not to be approached without some humor and some bewilderment.”
Freeman Dyson

Individuality

“Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply
and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says,
‘This is the real me,’ and when you have found that attitude, follow
it.” ~William James

Stress and Attitude

"It is not so much the stressors in our lives but how we see them ans what we do with them that determines how much we are at their mercy.  If we can change the way we see, we can change the way we respond."  Jon Kabat-Zinn

Authenticity

"Take your life in your own hands and what happens.  A terrible thing; no one to blame."  Erica Jong

Reality

"We have been taught to believe that negative equals realistic and positive equals unrealistic."  Susan Jeffers

Perspective

‎"Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but
to add color to my sunset sky." ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Perspective

 "The future becomes the present when you imagine that you are already what you will be when your assumption is fulfilled. Be still (least action) and know that you are that which you desire to be. The end of longing should be Being."                Neville Lancelot Goddard, who wrote The Power of Awareness in 1952: (p. 47)

Risk

‎"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far
they can go." (T.S. Elliot)

A Blessing

"We may not recognize a blessing when it is given, or we may have ideas about life that keep us from experiencing what we already have.   Sometimes we become frozen in the past or unaware of the potential of the present.   We may even come to feel entitled to what has been given by grace.  Or we become so caught up in what is missing in the world that we allow our hearts to break.   There are many ways to feel empty in the midst of our blessings."   Rachel Naomi Remen

Acceptance

"The problem arose not because of the fact, but because you couldn't accept it in the way it was happening.  You wanted it to follow your idea.   Remember, life is not going to follow you - you have to follow life.   Grudgingly or happily, that's your choice.   If you follow grudgingly you will be in suffering.   If you follow happily you become a buddha, you life becomes an ecstasy."