sabbatical: a dance

"We have moved through our day like dancers, not needing to touch more than lightly... Lightness of touch and living in the moment are intertwined."  -Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

I was gifted by Fay, at the outset of my time at Green Bough the book, Gift from the Sea.  She said she likes giving it to young women.  It was written in the 50's by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, who was a writer, was the wife of Charles Lindbergh the trans-Atlantic pilot, among many other roles and events that made up her life.

Anne wrote Gift from the Sea while on a personal vacation/retreat on an island off the coast of Florida.  I found it beautiful and a wonderful companion for my time at Green Bough.  She speaks of living from one's core, one's center - not neglecting the spokes of one's wheels and connections, but strengthening, tending one's core, so one is able to keep it all reined in, not get too scattered.

She writes of contemplation and action, essentially.

But she writes of this contemplation and action especially in the context of relationship - romantic relationship, relationships of care and of obligation, friendships, the web of relationships we find ourselves in at our various stages.

In her pointing toward the kind of relationship that honors both parties, fosters intimacy and togetherness, while also offering space and independence, she describes a single day when her sister joined her in her little island vacation bungalow.

The day was marked by meeting and parting, physical activity and stillness, conversation and silence, by freedom of movement, freedom of time and space.  They played, they worked, they tended dishes, they sat together, they laid under the stars in awe.

And thus she describes their day, in the quote above, as a dance.

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At Green Bough, I too found this "lightness of touch and living in the moment" to mark my time and experience there.  It was a joy to witness this among Fay, Steve, and Oliver - and a deeper joy to be welcomed into this dance, to live it for a few weeks.  I have found each of them to have a great capacity for healthy tenderness, for deep attentiveness to the other.  Fay let me know the first morning at prayer, "We do morning hugs and night hugs, and hugs in between."

Of course, there is plenty of space and time for each to do their own thing between those hugs.  And I think that is partly what makes the hugs all the more tender.

And of course, as any one who has ever attempted to join a contra dance - or really, just danced ever - we know that dance can be awkward, especially as we are first learning.  But what a beautiful thing it is to watch dancers meet and part in time with music, hands joining for a time, letting go, sometimes meeting only with eyes, and parting again!  And what a beautiful thing to feel those movements.  And the chaos of the times when someone (usually me!) gets off-step - I think these are all the more fun, even if confusing.

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When I went to Green Bough in April for a few days of retreat during Holy Week, I became a bit anxious about the commitment I'd made to spend most of my sabbatical time at Green Bough.  I drove the first two hours in silence - without radio, and with some thinking aloud to myself.  Then I switched on the radio, the song "Happy" by Pharrell Williams came on - and up went the volume.  And it didn't go back down - nor did the car dancing stop - till I pulled up at home and parked.

At some point, it hit me - "Oh, no - there probably aren't dance parties at Green Bough!  What am I going to do?!"  A month without loud music and dancing - without the purely joyful parts of the "plugged-in" world I would be un-plugging from for 3 weeks.  Yes, I'm feeling a deep need for silence after 2 years very full with sound, voice, busy-ness, chaos.  But yes, I also find a lot of life in music and dance.

I figured I would slip a little dance party in here or there while at Green Bough - and I did manage to get some pockets of car-dancing and kitchen-dancing in for myself while there.  But little did I know that the whole thing would come to feel like one big dance.  Like any good partner dance, I found myself stepping in time with Fay, Steve, Oliver, retreatants, and others who floated in and out of the community - "not needing to touch more than lightly, because we were instinctively moving to the same rhythm."

We became "partners moving to the same rhythm, creating a pattern together, and being invisibly nourished by it."

I hope to carry this lightness of touch, this spaciousness, this dance - with me into as many of my relationships as possible - and especially my life at L'Arche.