I have sent you my invitation, the note inscribed on the palm of my hand by the fire of living. Don’t jump up and shout, “Yes, this is what I want! Let’s do it!” Just stand up quietly and dance with me. Show me how you follow your deepest desires, spiraling down into the ache within the ache, and I will show you how I reach inward and open outward to feel the kiss of the Mystery, sweet lips on my own, every day. Don’t tell me you want to hold the whole world in your heart.

Show me how you turn away from making another wrong without abandoning yourself when you are hurt and afraid of being unloved. Tell me a story of who you are, and see who I am in the stories I live. And together we will remember that each of us always has a choice. Don’t tell me how wonderful things will be . . . some day. Show me you can risk being completely at peace, truly okay with the way things are right now in this moment, and again in the next and the next and the next. . .

Dance with me in the silence and in the sound of small daily words, holding neither against me at the end of the day. And when the sound of all the declarations of our sincerest intentions has died away on the wind, dance with me in the infinite pause before the next great inhale of the breath that is breathing us all into being, not filling the emptiness from the outside or from within. Don’t say, “Yes!” Just take my hand and dance with me.