Waiting for the Light

 “May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring    

Last night I was thankful for the reasonableness of most drivers in our area. We had a power outage that covered my area of town. I realized in my move I had lost track of where any light sources were in my home.

Since even Internet was unavailable, I didn’t know how far the blackout had reached but had to go through about 4 unlit corners before I reached lit roads again. Almost all drivers reasonably and responsibly treated them as 4 way stops so I was able to get safely across to an area of town where I could purchase alternate light sources.

On the way home the news said a few thousand home had their power back but a few thousand others would need to wait until at least 1 am. I didn’t know whether I was returning to power in my home or not.

I was thankful for the inside light in my car to help me read the instructions and get the batteries in place for my light sources since I arrived to no power.

I was thankful for the sleeping bag I had bought for cold temperatures, for the fact that we are dealing with the milder possibilities of winter weather and that my light sources were strong enough to let me read until the loud sound of something being worked on across the street could finish and I could drift off.

I was thankful for medications to help me get what sleep I could.

I awoke to light.

That I see the things to be thankful for gives me the relief of knowing this other condition I am dealing with is not depression. That I can hear the positives adds to that relief.

Finding peace in the darkness gives hope that I will be able to gain the resources I need to face this other thing causing me to need help right now. It will come. Peace will return. Stability will be found. Light will return.

Dear Once Upon a Time

Dear Once Upon A Time,

You believed the fairytales of a woman’s ability to be like a god changing the attitudes of another, bringing to life your fairytale perfect home. You believed that you could change enough, be enough to satisfy the desires of those who were the forces of power in the world you had been taught to believe. For you, the Stepford Wife existence would have been a mercy. You would not have had to deal with me.

When among the hoped for fairytales, the nightmare took root you fought with virtual tooth and claw to keep me trapped within the prescriptions of your schedules and I tried to comply, tried to find the line between your ridged expectations and the fluidity of my visions of a world of creative possibility waiting to be explored. It was never enough. He had called me frivolous, an escape. And you did not have the talent set that would have made it all better, that would have finally brought the acceptance you so longed for. The anger and despair in you built, an anger you could not accept. You broke when finally you came to realize things would not change.

Someone saw me in you then. She called me an eagle locked in a cage. Her vision gave you hope that perhaps I was not a chain that held you down but wings waiting inside and tentatively you began to seek me again.

For many more years you would struggle to find a way for both of us to be accepted without breaking the code they  had set you in throughout your life. It was an uneasy alliance for your world had become one that had little room for me. As before, when despair robbed you of the energy to hold me down you let me emerge to write words of hope that you could read or to record a memory you would someday need. In those years, you let me create at times as well, practical crafts, nothing too frivolous.

You even tried to kill me when you realized my presence would never allow your world to have the stability of acceptance in a fairytale romance you had fought for so long. It was easier to blame and discard me then to face your humanness which kept you from being a god with power to effect the choices of another.

Ironically, when you finally accepted the reality of your life and began to heal in the aloneness of distance, you still could not accept my presence in your life. You still blamed me for being. They called it anxiety and depression. I knew that it was your raging grief at not being god enough to meet the expectations of the world of thought you had been raised in. The day you finally came face to face with your freedom not to be responsible for the choices of another, you began to heal.

I had learned to wait, that even within myself I could not impose a vision on the part of me still in the pain of disillusioned dreams. It would be years before I would meet the images of the hurt woman in a way that you could begin to see the painfulness of a life without me. Our uneasy alliance would find more compatibility in our house of disappointing or distant relationships.

You still held a separate face within the mirror. My face aged yet yours remained trapped in the age your dreams stood still. Mine was a face you did not recognize as the lines slowly changed from the rigid prison of your lost dreams. There was an uncomfortableness when you looked in the mirror. You could not accept seeing me so clearly etched into the surface of your life.

A few days ago I looked in the mirror and only saw this face. The specter of your trapped image was gone. It has not returned. I can not feel you anymore. I can feel the legacy you left of finding order to build my life within, but your anxiety and discomfort are gone. There is a quietness within of just being.

Like other trapped pieces met through the years of healing you have faded into memory. I only hope you found that  inner island of healing that was hidden from us years ago when time came to put so much of the past to rest. I hope you are finally happy there feeling the acceptance you longed for.

But I go on, inwardly whole and healthy, living fully in this life that was always mine to live. I can only hope I am wiser now and aware enough to see the changes in direction that are needed when anxiety sends signals of danger ahead.

I have learned from you. Thank you for all you added in my life in the years you did not recognize your worth.

Peace to you,

Myself

 

 

You Decide

The author of the article had tried an experiment. For two days he “liked” everything that came on his social network feed. In the first day he already saw radical changes to what was shown there. By the second he had no personal content on his feed, only advertisements and was being inundated with information on topics he didn’t like at all. In the course of reading and working on an iPod that day, the article got lost in the shuffle of catching up on several subjects but the message stayed. We have the power to determine much of what comes our way. There are options to sensor our content.

But our power doesn’t stop with technology. It doesn’t even stop with the manual decision to press that “like” button that sets our preferences or let’s others know we have read what they have written. The words we say in our engagement with others sensors their involvement with us. It says who interacts with us. I know. I have seen it through some who have pulled away because, well, I think they have decided I am one of the negative people because there are things I care about and speak about that they have chosen to censor out of their world. It saddens me but I have to honour that decision because I have made the same choices whether I always feel comfortable with admitting it or not.

What we say matters. If we want to be heard authentically then we need to speak with authenticity. Who hears us, who feels safe speaking to us on social network and in the world around us is set by what we choose to say, how we express ourselves with body and face during our engagements, who we choose to socialize with, even those conversations overheard through association. What we say and do matters. There is a give and take, there is a setting of our social network and expectations based on who we choose to be.

There are no truly positive or negative people. Positive and negative are based on our decisions on what to sanction or not similar to the formulas used to determine our feed via the “like” button. The categories can be based on authentic multidimensional views of people or on the flatter two dimensional wall we choose to erect around what we allow in our world.

In my journey into mindfulness, Jon Kabat-Zinn has been one of the guides through the books I have chosen to read. Presently I am in the midst of his book, Coming to Our Senses. In the introduction he tells of this pivotal interaction at a meditation retreat:

Years ago, a meditation teacher opened an interview with me on a ten-day, almost silent retreat by asking, “How is the world treating you?” I mumbled some response or other to the effect that things were going OK. Then he asked me, “And how are you treating the world?”

I was taken aback. It was the last question I was expecting. It was clear he did not mean it in a general way. He wasn’t making pleasant conversation. He meant right there, that day, in what may have seemed to me at the time like little, even trivial ways. I thought I was more or less leaving “the world” in going on this retreat, but his comments drove home to me that there is no leaving the world, and that how I was relating to it in any and every moment, was important, in fact critical to my ultimate purpose in being there. I realized in that moment that I had a lot to learn about why I was even there in the first place, what meditation was really all about, and underlying it all, what I was really doing with me life.

My blog is not read by many. I don’t choose the topics that create chatter and frequent reposts. I don’t have the network to be go-to posts on any topic. There are times I feel like I should go with the flow of the in topics and attitudes to gain acceptance within some writing groups I have participated in. I have wondered if my voice should just be pulled out of one of the groups if it might be making someone else uncomfortable. But then I stop and think again.

How am I treating the world? If I choose to silence myself on certain issues, I am choosing to be a part of the censorship of some of the very people who need to feel validated within our society. If I do that, I choose to accept the two-dimensional definitions that have become related to the terms positive and negative people in so much social comment today.

If I believe in the wholeness of others, I have to accept the wholeness of myself as one representative of the world. If I believe in the validity of the feelings of others, then I have to accept the validity of my own. If I believe that life matters for others, I have to accept that my life matters, and so does what I write.

If I want to encourage others to use their voices, then like Sarah Bessey and Rachel Held Evans, I need to be willing to address the hard uncomfortable issues that are often silenced or marginalized by much of society. I need to be willing to risk being ostracized by the status quo if I want to be an open door to those who the status quo has ostracized.

We all decide who is on our social feed both on-line and out here in life. It is time that I stop letting others decide what that feed will be. It is time to start living and writing as if this moment matters. Only with authenticity about what that means to me will I find the community in which I belong. The decision will be made by being the kind of person I am meant to be.

I will start with this moment.

* (Thank you to my writing friend who found this link for me.)
I Liked Everything I Saw on Facebook for 2 Days. Here’s What It Did to Me. by Mat Honan, http://www.wired.com/2014/08/i-liked-everything-i-saw-on-facebook-for-two-days-heres-what-it-did-to-me/

 

 

Housewarming

It is an interesting phenomena that official housewarmings seem to go with buying a new place, not with renting one so nothing formal marked my move from an apartment to this townhouse where I have room to set aside a space for my art, to have an extra bed or two for my grandchildren and to sit at a table with someone to share a coffee or tea. The warming comes, instead, each time someone comes to share the space with me.

The first housewarming occurred the day I moved in. My special friend, David came down from his home up north. My son drove over from Alberta. My son-in-law and daughter helped move boxes and my other daughter met us after work to share a visit and a meal in a local Chinese restaurant where I am on friendly terms with the staff. Having them around me made the house a home even before the boxes were unpacked.

In the next weeks, boxes were emptied and things began to find their home in the space. The rush of finishing school and a two week trip out of province kept me from having others in for a time. David came to share a play and help pick out a piece of furniture, but other than that I shared the space only with myself. It was a time of my own settling in and finding the space my own.

This past weekend my house was warmed once more as my grandchildren had their first visit. Toys scattered across the space, kiddie couches sprawled out in the living room, a new mattress in the office waiting for the love seal fold-out frame that would give that special bed for the little ones. My rickety chairs were reinforced with new child friendly seats welcoming for the many visits I hope they share with me here.

During my granddaughter’s nap, her big brother put his mark on the place by helping me build a two drawer IKEA dresser so each of them can have their own drawer here. It is not a fashion home, but instead has games and toys shelved and stored, ready for the visits of little ones who are important to my world.

Wednesday they joined me again. In the afternoon my other daughter and her special other came by as well. Watching her fellow sprawled out on the floor playing cars with my grandson was a special sight. Having those moments to visit with her was a joy.

It doesn’t take much to warm a place. The presence of loved ones, room to explore the arts and other interests that make life vibrant, neighbours who show an understanding of shared space by helping each other. This is my celebration. The joy of it is, it does not have a time frame. It is something that I can celebrate over and over with each new guest who enters this space.

 The laughter of children
warms the heart and home.

Okay, That does it!

I couldn’t believe it. The rumbling sound of the garbage truck roused me from my revery. My first garbage pickup to be responsible to have my bins out for and I had missed it, and on a hot summer day. I groaned as I leaped up to see if just maybe it was the larger truck for the nearby apartment. It wasn’t.

I ran outside to look. How could someone have done this to me? I had only been in my home a little over a month. The first weeks I had still had the garbage bin at my apartment building. The past weeks I had been on a vacation. Now, I was finally really settling in here and I had the time wrong for when to put out my bins!

But there they were, set in place. One of the neighbors I am just starting to know must have understood. Without a word or an expectation they did this mundane job for me.

I think I know who would have done this. They are the same people who picked up my mail for me while I was gone. Our schedules have so far differed enough that we have hardly talked but they have still given small kindnesses.

Even though after 4 months of getting to stretch out over the parking spaces, they now have to clear two of the spaces for me, both families that share my lot and the building our homes reside in have been friendly.

Now this.

Small kindnesses go a long way to making others feel welcomed and valued. Without that sense of caring, space is simply space.

That does it! I think this townhouse is starting to feel like home. I only hope I can find ways to return small kindnesses to my neighbours.

Okay, so I didn’t do so well

Today the cleaner I hired worked in my one bedroom apartment pulling out appliances, cleaning walls and carpets, all the things I am limited in my knowledge or physical strength in how to do. I am surprised how much less apologetic I am then I would have been in the past about such things. I think my ability to handle letting someone into the corners I missed comes from the timing of this move.

In January I began seeing someone again to deal with some of the last residual dregs left behind by those dark spaces in my life. Cleaning out the corners of my psyche, I have room to accept the need to clean out the corners of my physical space.

This move is a chance to begin again with more understanding and awareness then I had at the time of my last move. It is a challenge though, too. Starting fresh, in any form, is a new chance to make decisions about where you will go from here.

This is where I am glad I have learned about mindful living in the past years. I get to begin in this moment I am in. I am able to acknowledge that this is where my life has brought me. This is who I am. I have the power to grow from this now because I accept this self as my identity in this moment.

There is something that feels strong in accepting yourself right at the place you are. The feelings of stress that come by striving to be something else aren’t there to take energy away from living what is. Within each moment there is a recognition that choices matter. I am not longer waiting for something out there to start me living. I get to choose to live right where I am.

I am thankful that I began finding this out before my home changed to something more spacious (to me) and more freeing. If this inner freeing is tied to things or others than if they are lost, it can be lost. By learning to center myself no matter what, I give myself freedom to live no matter what is gained or lost in my life.

I have not arrived in some place of peaceful bliss. I still have fears. I still have my “if only” lists that play through my mind. Yes, I would have like to have not felt a bit of humiliation of having someone come to clean the places I didn’t know how to reach into in a space too small to move large things. These are all a part of this me where I am right now. By not trying to pretend those things aren’t there, I free energy to move forward.

Yes, I think I am going to like this new stage in my life.

 

B – Blinders

blind·er
noun
1. a person or thing that blinds.
2. a blinker for a horse.
3. British Informal. a spectacular shot or action in sports, especially soccer: He played a blinder.
http://dictionary.reference.com

My morning opened with a “evangelical” video shared by my sister. On this video, according to our different understandings of some of the words, there was a point of agreement. But as the piece progressed, knowing the type of letters and comments that have been posted by so much of my family, I sadly knew that to build a conversation further than the video would end in dissension.

Listening to this video and knowing that the rigidity of beliefs would break down any chance of discussion, my B word came to mind: Blinders.

It was interesting to follow this word on line to the documentary Blinders directed by Donny Moss and debated in great length on several different networks and videos. In all the debates and conversations I watched, one point stood out in my mind in relationship to come of the events in the past week. Asked what prompted him to actively create this documentary he speaks of walking past the animals for years feeling that something was wrong. It took a horse being hit in the side for him to begin asking the hard questions that led to the documentary.

Like so many of us, it takes publicized catastrophy to push us into action. Having been trained by cultural ideals of being a “polite society”, too often we hold back those comments that could make waves, often leaving those who believe their ideals are more important than politeness to crowd the airways. We put on our blinders, shutting out these dissensions, pressing the “I don’t want to see this” buttons and saying nothing unless some braver soul posts something we can agree on.

In the United States, a “horse” got hit this week. A policy change in a highly visible religiously affiliated group accepting one formerly disenfranchised group of people meets with the power of the outspoken voice that claims to serve the same God that I follow. Knowing that my family stands hand-in-hand with those who chose to use the power of the mighty dollar to bully the organization to remove the change, I stayed silent except where I could hide my words from my family.

I stay silent as well because I know that the same Bible they are using to disenfranchise this community from the right of creating families holds even more verses against me as a divorced person if you read it as a static account. I stand silent because I feel myself in the place between. My own acceptance stands at a balance since the policy that accepts these people still would leave me out. I hide in my silence wanting to hold on to what little acceptance I feel left with from my family who would be so vocal about the “horror” of this acceptance. I do not see my voice as valued, or so I think to justify my silence.

When the reality that choosing to show acceptance would adversely affect those organizations that they were working with, the U.S. organization rescinded their policy change. While I do, in some ways, understand their decision, I am saddened by what that has to say to the group of people who have had one further act of discrimination publically thrown at them.

As a person who has experienced God’s mercy and grace extended beyond my understanding, I struggle with those who would create a hedge of acceptable and unacceptable actions to determine what it means to follow Christ in the life of another.  I believe and yet when the accepted discrimination is publicized, I see the mirror of my own participation because I have chosen to be silent to protect myself from the exclusion I will experience if I speak out. It calls me to begin questioning the forces that I have blindly tried to hide under the radar from for the past decade of my life.

What will I choose to do with this? I look to the Quakers in the process of abolition for some guidance. I see the example of Benjamin Lay who pulled himself so far off the path of cultural expectations that his message could be denounced and yet was seen as a possible affect to some within the organized structure of the Quakers. Will I isolate myself even further from the organizations that now exist in the name of the God I believe in? Or will I find a way to step out of this isolation I have and enter the arena of voices speaking belief that resonates with a gospel of inclusion?

I am on the edges. I am a Benjamin Lay in my influence but not in the strength of my stands on any issues of faith. I feel so ineffectual in my ability to make any difference. Maybe I should put my blinders back on and curl up in my isolation. It would be the easiest on the short run, except I would keep running up against my own soul.

And so I risk these words on my sister’s thread:

“I find this a beautiful talk. I find sadness in it though in the fact of how many Christians have accepted the “righteousness of the Pharisees” as their mark of whether or not others are Christians. It is so easy to look at others in our prayers and say “I am not a sinner like that man/woman/child” or more frighteningly, “Since that person does so and so I get to sit on God’s judgment seat and decide they are not a Christian”. May God grant us the grace Paul talks about in Romans 14 as we who are children of the same father learn how to live a living risen Christ to the world we live in.”

For those who are in groups where you are supported in your growth of faith, that may seem small. For me, it was a mountain since I have seen the things my family posts. But it is what I needed to say.

You see, divorce and depression are two forces in my life that have shattered the connectors for my blinders. And I struggle with the hatred that the world sees too often as synonomous with faith in the God who I not only love, but who I believe has made a difference in my life even with the unacceptance I have experienced from many who also call upon The name of the One I Love.

If my God has done that for me, then I will not offer less to anyone. I will continue seeking those in the faith community who serve an inclusive God. If God is anything less, than there is no hope for me.

http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/

 

*Please note, in posting this as a part of the A to Z Challenge I am not holding that my views are in accordance with those of any one else involved.

 

 

A – Abstraction

ab·strac·tion
noun
1. an abstract or general idea or term.
2. the act of considering something as a general quality or characteristic, apart from concrete realities, specific objects, or actual instances.
3. an impractical idea; something visionary and unrealistic.
4. the act of taking away or separating; withdrawal: The sensation of cold is due to the abstraction of heat from our bodies.
5. secret removal, especially theft.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/abstraction

It is the new societal norm as old as history – take away the characteristics, the feeling states, the experiences that don’t resonate with the guidelines in any given society and you can arrive at the abstraction of what it means to be an acceptable member of that society. Slated, By Teri Terry, is a book for youth that takes that concept to its cutting edge.

It is a society where the ability to alter the personality of an individual has reached its highest level passing an edge of ethical practice. Those younger than 16 that are deemed as deviants in society are “slated”, thoughts and memories within the upper cortexes of her brain have been, supposedly, wiped clean. For a number of weeks and months they are held in the hospital where they are retrained from infancy up. They progress at a rate faster than in the early years but often are still far below their peers in skills and knowledge when reintroduced to society. Given a monitoring system to help them stay in accepted parameters of emotions these young people are permanently marked as different even as they are being trained to fit a norm.

The story is viewed through the experiences of Kyla. With no real experiential memories, she has been re-nurtured to an age where she can now be adopted into her new family – a mother, a father, and another sister, clearly not their natural offspring. A microchip in her brain wired a bracelet on her arm helps record and alert her to levels of stimulus outside of the accepted parameters. If her levels of sadness or anger cause the number to drop too low she is expected to first go unconscious and even reach a point of death. Part of the training she receives is methods to stabilize her “happiness” level into the acceptable parameters. The changes in this status are recorded in the chip to help others monitor her adjustments to society.

It is soon shown that Kyla is different from most of the slated. An artist, she finds her motor memory in one hand is inconsistent to what she has been told is true about herself. She also finds inconsistencies in her emotions and the reading on her Levo. Within the novel we walk with her as she faces these new questions. We are drawn in to a relationship with a three dimensional character. We are caused to care for her and yet question the past that could have brought her to this state. We are led to question the morals of the society which has the power to subjugate difference into non-existence.

As I read this story I could not help but compare the society to some of the favored inspirational quotes in the social media. Are there ways that we, as a society, are already adopting some of those beliefs that label and ostracize those who don’t fit our social norms? Are we perpetuating conditions that drive those whose level of pain is outside of our accepted levels into hiding by shaming them simply through a regurgitation of clichés about what it means to be positive people? Do we drive those whose stories might help others underground by distancing ourselves from their “negativity” if they dare to question those systems that we treat as sacred icons of rightness?

I see the posts and stories where people ask the why after a tragedy comes to light. What would happen if we dared open up those places of our own brokenness not as topics in books but as parts of real conversations as real people? Is there a chance we might alleviate one more tragedy by helping one more person feel less alone?

Yes, there are those who have been taught to be dependent, and so drain those who try to be present for them. I know that siren’s call. I am a person who struggles and the reality is, I find that being willing to seek help for myself but having struggles is not a popular position to take. By choosing not to be dependent, I choose to not be of interest to those who get their validation by reaching down to the needy. However, by choosing to be open about the reality of my struggle to heal, I also close myself off from those who have the positive people view of relationships.

Like Kyla, I find myself searching faces and conversations for those who will simply walk alongside me in this journey as we encourage each other to find wholeness. Like Kyla, something inside me is not willing to just fade into external expectations. At the end of the book, I find myself willing to journey further with her.

*Terry, Teri; Slated; Scholastic Inc.; 2012

http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/

In the Weaknesses

It was easy to see there was something different about the child. The little girl’s eyes moved rapidly from place to place, her head turning and jerking at odd intervals. Even her hands curved and twisted around each other as the girl moved forward and backwards in her seat never seeming to come to a rest. She would look up her head rocking in an unfinished nod, down and to the side in a similar jerky rocking. Her eyes never seemed to quite focus on any one thing or person.

I turned to look at her mother standing, twisting her hands together, tucked as deeply toward a corner as she could be and still be available to go and settle her daughter when she would get out of her seat. This was Sunday School music time. The children were expected to sit and sing the songs or stand and do the motions when asked.

Her daughter did not seem to be able to follow the directions and I could see the wide-eyed wariness in her mother’s face as she glanced at the other adults in the room. Her stooped shoulders told more of the story. She had been criticized in the past for her daughter’s lack of proper manners. She held herself in the brittle defensive stance of one who was ready to be reprimanded once more about her daughter’s behaviors.

When the children left for Sunday School classes, she did not go upstairs. Using my own toddler’s busy-ness as an excuse, I stayed behind as well, engaging her in conversation. It was nice having her come and visit us. Where was she from. Did she have any other children? Did she have a church in her town?

She quietly answered all the questions but did not ask any of her own for quite a while. Then she asked a strange question. Did I ever consider having another child?

It was at this place I chose to step out of my pastor’s wife’s friendly script and answer with the honesty of the mother with my experiences. “I don’t know. I went into post partum depression after my second child and I am not sure I can handle going through that again.”

Her head jerked up and she stared at me with wide shocked eyes. “You mean Christians actually have problems?” she queried.

I took the risk and told her how discouraged I was and how incompetent I felt as a parent after having felt like the best parent in the world after the birth of my first. I told her of the times I set my baby in her crib while she cried, closed the door and curled up in the hall shaking because I felt so helpless and didn’t know what to do to help her. I told her how I would pull myself together and go back to her. I told her how I feared my own inadequacy, of the reality of my own mother’s style of discipline and my fear that I would make similar mistakes if I couldn’t find my way through this. I felt having another child might be too much of a risk.

In the following convresation she opened up to me about the differences she saw in her daughter and the responses she had from others in her church when she would try to talk about what was going on , She talked about her own fears of failing to meaure up. She would get lectured about not praying enough, about not trusting God enough, about “kids grow out of” it, about needing to be more positive, about not having enough faith. “I quit going to church,” she admitted. “I just coudn’t take anymore.” She had only come to church today because her husband asked her to come along. Since it was a place they had never been, she took the risk.

I never made it up to the service that day — one more criticism for those judging my wantingness in being the pastor’s wife I was supposed to be. But that was one that brushed right off my back. “What you do for the least of these, you do for me.” My place of worship that day was with a young desparately hurting mother. And the worship only came because I let go of being a “positive” role model and chose to speak as a real struggling person who also had a faith to hang on through what was not an easy time in life.

We hugged when she left. And she thanked me for helping her find faith again. As always, it was in the weaknesses of my life that Christ shown brightest.

The Dancing Place

No one knew how young they were when first they met in the dancing place. He entered from the east and she from the west. The trees arched above in cathedral splendor. The floor was the elegance of rustling leaves, hardy grasses and moss. He smiled, she smiled. They laughed and skipped in the leaves. Neither knew who first suggested the dance.

Over the years they would meet. The children changed with time, hair and clothes, features maturing. The trees and grasses made way for walls and parquet floor. No one quite knew how that particular place was chosen to be the dance hall. The years pass by in the swirl of the dance yet always when it ended he would leave to the east and she would leave to the west.

During the war she would enter alone. No one spoke, wondering what she would do. Turning her face to the east she raised her arms for the dance and swirled. His mates remember a particular night the artillery silenced inexplicably and he stood turning his face to the west. Holding up his arms he silently danced. No one talked about it, and for some strange reason, this act passed without the normal comrade banter.

When next they met on the dance floor, he entered in a wheelchair. His face held a sad hope, acknowledging his broken body and the years between. Wrapped around his shoulders was a red robe given him in memory of his heroism. When she entered she looked at him with the smile of welcome that broke the icy bitterness growing around his heart.

They danced through the years only on that one night, leaving each time through their separate doors. No one knew why or what their lives held, but they would meet for this one dance. That she would bend her stance to the wheel chair and later changed arm holds to accommodate crutches then cane would simply become a part of their ritual.

The last time he enters the hall he is old and wizened. His body curls up into itself and his trembling, age spotted hands can hardly hold up the red robe that drapes his shrunken figure. There is a sad certainty in his rhumy eyes. This time he would dance alone. Those who bring him wheel his chair into the center of the room and step away. He would still have this dance. He would dance to remember.

Suddenly a pale shadow of a woman appears before him. She is old like him and yet her skin is unwrinkled, her body tall and straight. “Did you think I wouldn’t come?” She asks him with the easy smile he has always known.

She walks to him and holds out her arms in the dancing embrace that had swirled through their lives. He can barely lift his arms so she gently lifts them in the flexibility that had always played a part in this moment. He closes his eyes and they begin the dance one last time.

The slow clumsy movement becomes a dance of glory, the wheelchair soon left behind as they dance. Their bodies grow backwards through the years until they are children again, dancing in the cathedral of trees.

This time when the dance ends, they do not part. Arm and arm they walk toward the door opening in the north line of trees and leave the dancing place together.