Born to dance

“Good work finds the way between pride and despair. It graces with health. It heals with grace. It preserves the given so that it remains a gift. By it, we lose loneliness: we clasp the hands of those who go before us, and the hands of those who come after us; we enter the little circle of each other’s arms, and the larger circle of lovers whose hands are joined in a dance, and the larger circle of all creatures, passing in and out of life, who move also in a dance, to a music so subtle and vast that no ear hears it except in fragments.” Wendell Berry, The Healing

“A mature human intimacy requires a deep and profound respect for the free and empty space that needs to exist within and between partners and that asks for a continuous mutual protection and nurture. Only in this way can a relationship be lasting, precisely because mutual love is experienced as a participation in a greater and earlier love to which it points. In this way intimacy can be rich and fruitful, since it has been given carefully protected space in which to grow. This relationship no longer is a fearful clinging to each other but a free dance, allowing space in which we can move forward and backward, form constantly new patterns, and see each other as always new.” Henri Nouwen

“Come into the body’s thanksgiving, when it knows

and acknowledges itself a living soul.

Come into the dance of the community, joined

in a circle, hand in hand, the dance of the eternal

love of women and men for one another

and of neighbors and friends for one another.

Always disappearing, always returning,

calling his neighbors to return, to think again

of the care of flocks and herds, of gardens

and fields, of woodlots and forests and the uncut groves,

calling them separately and together, calling and calling,

he goes forever toward the long restful evening

and the croak of the night heron over the river at dark.”

Wendell Berry, The Mad Farmer, Flying the Flag Rough Branch, Secedes from the Union