| 2005-09-28 - 10:26 p.m.
Dance as a metaphor for life
A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules. The partners do not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently in the same pattern, intricate, but gay and swift and free, like a country dance of Mozart's. To touch heavily would be to arrest the pattern and freeze the movement, to check the endlessly changing beauty of its unfolding. There is no place here for the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand; only the barest touch in passing. Now arm in arm, now face to face, now back to back - it does not matter which, because they know they are partners moving to the same rhythm, creating a pattern together and being invisibly nourished by it. It is the joy of living together in the moment.
From Gift From The Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. I love this passage. Actually, I love the whole book, and need to give it another read. When we got married, we were married in a church that didn't allow non biblical readings as part of the wedding ceremony. So I had my dear friend R read this at our rehearsal dinner. I had mentioned this reading and its contents to our dance instructor at our last lesson, and took the book to our lesson today so she could read the passage. We worked a bit with a different instructor, the owner, at today's lesson, and it was ALL about this passage. How we have to not anticipate, just be in the moment, don't work SO HARD at it. And I have to learn not to lead. Yanno, when we started this, I thought it would just be fun to learn to dance. But there's a lot more for me to learn, I think. Maybe I don't always need to steer. Maybe I don't always need to be in control, in charge. Maybe I don't need to cling too tightly. Because he will always be there to take me in his arms when I've finished turning away.
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