Dancer Of God Quotes

Dancers are the athletes of God.

Jared told her he used to be an exotic dancer in San Francisco.' 'My body is a gift from God,' Jared said gravely. 'Except for my hips, which are clearly a gift from the devil.

Dear God in heaven.” Nik and Ban turned away, but Alek stood. Transfixed. “My God, y’all. She’s the worst goddamn dancer I’ve ever seen.” “Turn away. It’ll hurt your eyes. Turn away!

Dancers are the messengers of the gods.

God creates, I do not create.
I assemble and I steal everywhere to do it –
from what I see, from what the dancers can do,
from what others do...

I am a dancer. I believe that we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living.... In each it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one's being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes in some area an athlete of God.

This world we live in is the dance of the creator. Dancers come and go in the twinkling of an eye, but the dance lives on.

Time would come when gold would outweigh blood. But this was still Virginia of old, where a dubious God held that those who would offer a man for sale were somehow more honorable than those who effected that sale.

Ammanas slipped noiselessly forward until he was on the other side of the corpse. ‘It’s her, isn’t it.’ ‘It is.’ ‘How many times do our followers have to die, Cotillion?’ the god asked, then sighed. ‘Then again, she clearly ceased being a follower some time ago.’ ‘She thought we were gone, Ammanas. The Emperor and Dancer. Gone. Dead.’ ‘And in a way, she was right.’ ‘In a way, aye. But not in the most important way.’ ‘Which is?’ Cotillion glanced up, then grimaced. ‘She was a friend.’ ‘Ah, that most important way.

The greatest drug of all, my dear, was not one of those pills in so many colors that you took over the years, was not the opium, the hash you smoked in houses at the beach, or the speed or smack you shot up in Sutherland's apartment, no, it wasn't any of these. It was the city, darling, it was the city, the city itself. And do you see why I had to leave? As Santayana said, dear, artists are unhappy because they are not interested in happiness; they live for beauty. God, was that steaming, loathsome city beautiful!!! And why finally no human lover was possible, because I was in love with all men, with the city itself.

This is a day of celebration! Today, we are divorcing the past and marrying the present. Dance, and you will find God in every room. Today, we are divorcing resentment and marrying forgiveness. Sing, and God will find you in every tune. Today, we are divorcing indifference and marrying love. Drink, and play that tambourine against your thighs. We have so much celebrating to do!

I might not be a good singer but I will praise and worship God with all my heart. I might not be the best dancer but I will dance for the Lord all the days of my life.

I shall be your poet! I do not want to be a poet for others; make your appearance, and I shall be your poet. I shall eat my own poem, and that will be my food. Or do you find me unworthy? Just as a temple dancer dances to the honor of the god Gudutl, so I have consecrated myself to your service; light, thinly clad, limber, unarmed, I renounce everything. I own nothing; I desire to own nothing; I love nothing; I have nothing to lose-but have I not thereby become more worthy of you, you who long ago must have been tired of depriving people of what they love, tired of their craven sniveling and craven pleading. Surprise me-I am ready

How funny you are today New York like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime and St. Bridget’s steeple leaning a little to the left here I have just jumped out of a bed full of V-days (I got tired of D-days) and blue you there still accepts me foolish and free all I want is a room up there and you in it and even the traffic halt so thick is a way for people to rub up against each other and when their surgical appliances lock they stay together for the rest of the day (what a day) I go by to check a slide and I say that painting’s not so blue where’s Lana Turner she’s out eating and Garbo’s backstage at the Met everyone’s taking their coat off so they can show a rib-cage to the rib-watchers and the park’s full of dancers with their tights and shoes in little bags who are often mistaken for worker-outers at the West Side Y why not the Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they won and in a sense we’re all winning we’re alive the apartment was vacated by a gay couple who moved to the country for fun they moved a day too soon even the stabbings are helping the population explosion though in the wrong country and all those liars have left the UN the Seagram Building’s no longer rivalled in interest not that we need liquor (we just like it) and the little box is out on the sidewalk next to the delicatessen so the old man can sit on it and drink beer and get knocked off it by his wife later in the day while the sun is still shining oh god it’s wonderful to get out of bed and drink too much coffee and smoke too many cigarettes and love you so much

I’m not a fucking thinker, wisher, dancer, or whiner. I’m a fucking doer. Can’t expect God to do it all now, can we? The man’s got plenty to do already, I’m just doing my part and cleaning up my side of the room.

Here is to all the brilliant minds that love deeply, for they write the stories that make us dream of true love. Here is to all the visionaries that create a miracle when others give up hope. Here is to all the artists, musicians, actors, singers, songwriters, dancers, screenwriters, philosophers, inventors and poetic hearts that create a perspective of heaven we can experience in this lifetime. But most of all, here is to the wild souls that the world calls broken, insane, abnormal, weird or different because they are the ones that renew our faith, by what they overcome and create, in a world that needs a sign that God doesn’t forget the least of us.

I felt a great rage, not simply because I knew they had been taken but because I knew how they had been taken, how they had been parted from eacch other, how I was born and made by this great parting. Better than before, I understood the whole dimensions of this crime, the entirety of the theft, the small moments, the tenderness, the quarrels and corrections, all stolen, so that men such as my father might live as gods.

I LIKE WHAT THE DANCER MARTHA GRAHAM ONCE said, that each of us is unique and if we didn’t exist something in the world would have been lost. I wonder, then, why we are so quick to conform—and what the world has lost because we have. William Blake said about Jesus that he was “all virtue and acted from impulse, not from rules.” If we are to be like him, aren’t we to speak and move and do, to act upon the world and take new ground from the forces that work against our unique genius and beauty? What if part of God’s message to the world was you? The true and real you?

Makes you feel sorry for the gods and goddesses, doesn't it? After their temples fall apart. I wonder what happens to them? Some of them die. Some of them change. And some of them just keep going. Maybe some even get jobs as dancers.

Artemis is freedom—wild, untrammelled, aloof from all entanglements. She is a huntress, a dancer, the goddess of nature and wildness, a virgin physically and, even more important, a virgin psychologically, inviolable, belonging to no one, defined by no relationship, confined by no bond.

He was honest,” Wayne said. “I got a sense for that sort of thing.” He sneezed. “You believed that Lessie really was a dancer, the first time we met her,” Waxillium said, rising. “That’s different. She was a woman. Good at lying, they are. The God Beyond made’m that way.” “I’m … not certain how I should take that,” Marasi said. “With a pinch of copper,” Waxillium said. “And a healthy dose of skepticism. Just like anything Wayne says.

God, could that dopey girl dance. Buddy Singer and his stinking band was playing 'Just One of Those Things' and even they couldn't ruin it entirely. It's a swell song. I didn't try any trick stuff while we danced--I hate a guy that does a lot of show-off tricky stuff on the dance floor--but I was moving her around plenty, and she stayed with me. The funny thing is, I thought she was enjoying it, too, till all of a sudden she came out with this very dumb remark. "I and my girl friends saw Peter Lorre last night," she said. "The movie actor. In person. He was buyin' a newspaper. He's cute." "You're lucky," I told her. "You're really lucky. You know that?" She was really a moron. But what a dancer.

Come on, Ted. I’m not exactly the type to be a rich man’s bimbo.” “That’s true.” A world of compassion softened his voice. “Bimbos are generally good-hearted women who are pleasant to be around.” “Spoken from experience, I’m sure. By the way, you may be God Almighty on the golf course, but you’re a lousy dancer. Let me lead.

It was Kellanved – all of this. Him and Dancer. They used Tavore Paran from the very start. They used all of us, Hedge.’ ‘That’s what gods do, aye. So you don’t like it? Fine, but listen to me. Sometimes, what they want – what they need us to do – sometimes it’s all right. I mean, it’s the right thing to do. Sometimes, it makes us better people.’ ‘You really believe that?’ ‘And when we’re better people, we make better gods.’ Fiddler looked away. ‘It’s hopeless, then. We can stuff a god with every virtue we got, it still won’t make us any better, will it? Because we’re not good with virtues, Hedge.’ ‘Most of the time, aye, we’re not. But maybe then, at our worst, we might look up, we might see that god we made out of the best in us. Not vicious, not vengeful, not arrogant or spiteful. Not selfish, not greedy. Just clear-eyed, with no time for all our rubbish. The kind of god to give us a slap in the face for being such shits.

God of Gods. Destroyer of Evil. Passionate lover. Fierce warrior. Consummate dancer. Charismatic leader. All-powerful, yet incorruptible. A quick wit, accompanied by an equally quick and fearsome temper. Over the centuries, no foreigner who came to our land – conqueror, merchant, scholar, ruler, traveller – believed that such a great man could possibly have existed in reality. They assumed that he must have been a mythical God, whose

You know, when people who were once religious no longer believe in God, they never really change; they just go on, hunting for the ecstatic food, trying to satisfy that hunger.

They say the silence is the language of God, but so is music. This is why we dance, we become loud in our silence.

Man made us slave, but God willed us free.

She took to praying to Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit of her childhood, who had not been a jealous God, she thought, but had waited patiently for her to honor Him again.

He ignores Ivy’s request and keeps on. “You never told me you could sing like that! Jesus, I don’t know what to think about anymore. My honey knows she’s the worst dancer in the world, and Dex is like a fucking rock god.” That earns him a slap on the head from Ivy and an eye roll from me.

The gods cannot place their gifts into a closed fist. First your hand must be emptied, then the gifts may be received. We poor fools call this loss, and we suffer, but it is the blessing of the gods.

Do you know that the spectator is the last of the rings which, as I am saying, receive the power of the original magnet from one another? The rhapsode like yourself and the actor are intermediate links, and the poet himself is the first of them. Through all these the God sways the souls of men in any direction which he pleases, and makes one man hang down from another. Thus there is a vast chain of dancers and masters and undermasters of choruses, who are suspended, as if from the stone, at the side of the rings which hang down from the Muse. And every poet has some Muse from whom he is suspended, and by whom he is said to be possessed, which is nearly the Ion 5 same thing; for he is taken hold of.

But as a kid, I preferred the black side, and often wished that Mommy had sent me to black schools like my friends. Instead I was stuck at that white school, P.S. 138, with white classmates who were convinced I could dance like James Brown. They constantly badgered me to do the “James Brown” for them, a squiggling of the feet made famous by the “Godfather of Soul” himself, who back in the sixties was bigger than life. I tried to explain to them that I couldn’t dance. I have always been one of the worst dancers that God has ever put upon this earth.

We have one collective hope: the Earth And yet, uncounted people remain hopeless, famine and calamity abound Sufferers hurl themselves into the arms of war; people kill and get killed in the name of someone else’s concept of God Do we admit that our thoughts & behaviors spring from a belief that the world revolves around us? Each fabricated conflict, self-murdering bomb, vanished airplane, every fictionalized dictator, biased or partisan, and wayward son, are part of the curtains of society’s racial, ethnic, religious, national, and cultural conflicts, and you find the human ego turning the knobs and pulling the levers When I track the orbits of asteroids, comets, and planets, each one a pirouetting dancer in a cosmic ballet, choreographed by the forces of gravity, I see beyond the plight of humans I see a universe ever-expanding, with its galaxies embedded within the ever-stretching four-dimensional fabric of space and time However big our world is, our hearts, our minds, our outsize atlases, the universe is even bigger There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on the world’s beaches, more stars in the universe than seconds of time that have passed since Earth formed, more stars than words & sounds ever uttered by all humans who have ever lived The day we cease the exploration of the cosmos is the day we threaten the continuing of our species In that bleak world, arms-bearing, resource-hungry people & nations would be prone to act on their low-contracted prejudices, and would have seen the last gasp of human enlightenment Until the rise of a visionary new culture that once again embraces the cosmic perspective; a perspective in which we are one, fitting neither above nor below, but within

It was like time would stop, and the dancer would sort of step through some kind of portal and he wasn't doing anything different than he had ever done, 1,000 nights before, but everything would align. And all of a sudden, he would no longer appear to be merely human. He would be lit from within, and lit from below and all lit up on fire with divinity. And when this happened, back then, people knew it for what it was, you know, they called it by it's name. They would put their hands together and they would start to chant, "Allah, Allah, Allah, God God, God." That's God, you know.

My Chocolate Mudslide is going down smooth when we hear the three bells. Bing. Bing. Bing. But instead of Dan Dan the Party Man, it’s a woman’s voice and she’s breathing heavily. She sounds Filipina, if that’s even a thing. “Bravo… Bravo… Bravo,” she pants. “Main engine. Starboard side. Bravo… Bravo… Bravo.” We hear the speaker shut off. People look around a little nervously. The dancer warming up on stage makes a beeline for backstage. Within seconds the three bells are back. Oh, thank God, it’s our Greek captain. “Laydis and gentlemen, thissis your captain spicking. Pliss proceed to your muster stations.” This is not what I wanted him to say. We get up and make our way painfully slowly through the completely full theater. Everyone is quiet. Which is the wooooooorst. It’s scary when a group of people all know instinctively not to joke around. Another voice comes over the PA, repeating, “Please, remain calm. Please proceed to your muster stations.” The German half of me is thinking, “Shove the old people out of the way. Shove the old and the infirm! If they are strong enough to resist you, they deserve to live.” The Greek half of me wants to scream at our Greek captain. I do neither and proceed obediently.

At bed-time I went into my room and put out the light. I didn't get undressed. I lay on my bed and looked out of the window at the stars. I read in a book that the stars can take you anywhere. I've never wanted to be an astronaut because of the helmets. If I were up there on the moon, or by the Milky Way, I'd want to feel the stars round my head. I'd want them in my hair the way they are in paintings of the gods. I'd want my whole body to feel the space, the empty space and points of light. That's how dancers must feel, dancers and acrobats, just for a second, that freedom.

As a matter of fact, yes,” I lie. “I love classical piano. Beethoven and, uh…those other guys.” He cocks an eyebrow. “Name two pieces.” “Um…‘Piano Man’ by Billy Joel.” “Oh, God.” “And ‘Tiny Dancer’ by Elton John.” He grins suddenly, and his face, which is already too nice of a face, transforms into gorgeous.

You must learn to bend to open windows, my friend. That is why artists and dancers are closest to God. They clench their chests every day to salute the Creator, while opening up portals to the universe. The artist mediates and prays as he/she creates, knowing somewhere, deep down --- creativity is the highest transmission of love.

In my early twenties, I was traveling through a small town in Turkey called Cappadocia, when the divine spark of faith reignited within me like lightning. All it took was my eyes to fall upon a woman who was drowned in her worship of God. I watched her pray in an old seventeenth-century animal barn, as if nothing in the world existed but her divine Lover. She did not robotically repeat words of prayer like a formula; rather, every word she uttered came with a silent “I love you, my beloved Lord.” Her words were like synchronized dancers swimming in unison in the ocean of love that poured out of her. She was the first person I had ever seen in my life that not only prayed but she herself became the prayer.

God don't give out certain.

My honey knows she’s the worst dancer in the world, and Dex is like a fucking rock god.

[...] you'll have to forgive me, darling, I am old-fashioned, I believe in General Motors and the clarity of the gods . . .

To worship means to feel distance. But God is not distant.

I know exactly what Einstein meant when he said, "Dancers are the athletes of God." You three look like angels. I can't wait to see you dancing in the Christmas concert.

When the hippie era ended and the hangover began, as idealism gives way to disillusionment, the hair of the marchers and street-dancers kept getting longer, and soon it began to tangle. Free love deteriorated into loveless promiscuity, our great electric Kool-Aid acid test churned out an entire generation of burnt-out old relics, and the hair, once a symbol of freedom, became symbolic of the new face of prison, a lawlessness which taken to its logical extreme would imprison all of society as our growing criminal element took to the streets.

and I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his art, and finally also his only piety, his “service of God.

I felt a great rage, not simply because I knew that they had been taken but because I knew how they had been taken, how they had been parted from each other, how I was born and made by this great parting. Better than before, I understood the whole dimensions of this crime, the entirety of the theft, the small moments, the tenderness, the quarrels and corrections, all stolen, so that men such as my father might live as gods.

Something creaked beneath me! A soft step on rotting wood! I jumped startled, scared, and turned, expecting to see-God knows what! Then I sighed, for it was only Chris standing in the gloom, silently staring at me. Why? Did I look prettier than usual? Was it the moonlight, shining through my airy clothes? All random doubts were cleared when he said in a voice gritty and low, "You look beautiful sitting there like that." He cleared the frog in his throat. "The moonlight is etching you with silver-blue, and I can see the shape of your body through your clothes." Then, bewilderingly, he seized me by the shoulders, digging in his fingers, hard! They hurt. "Damn you, Cathy! You kissed that man! He could have awakened and seen you, and demanded to know who you were! And not thought you only a part of his dream!" Scary the way he acted, the fright I felt for no reason at all. "How do you know what I did? You weren't there; you were sick that night." He shook me, glaring his eyes, and again I thought he seemed a stranger. "He saw you, Cathy-he wasn't soundly asleep!" "He saw me?" I cried, disbelieving. It wasn't possible . . . wasn't! "Yes!" he yelled. This was Chris, who was usually in such control of his emotions. "He thought you a part of his dream! But don't you know Momma can guess who it was, just by putting two and two together-just as I have? Damn you and your romantic notions! Now they're on to us! They won't leave money casually about as they did before. He's counting, she's counting, and we don't have enough-not yet!" He yanked me down from the widow sill! He appeared wild and furious enough to slap my face-and not once in all our lives had he ever struck me, though I'd given him reason to when I was younger. But he shook me until my eyes rolled, until I was dizzy and crying out: "Stop! Momma knows we can't pass through a looked door!" This wasn't Chris . . . this was someone I'd never seen before . . . primitive, savage. He yelled out something like, "You're mine, Cathy! Mine! You'll always be mine! No matter who comes into your future, you'll always belong to me! I'll make you mine . . . tonight . . . now!" I didn't believe it, not Chris! And I did not fully understand what he had in mind, nor, if I am to give him credit, do I think he really meant what he said, but passion has a way of taking over. We fell to the floor, both of us. I tried to fight him off. We wrestled, turning over and over, writhing, silent, a frantic strug- gle of his strength against mine. It wasn't much of a battle. I had the strong dancer's legs; he had the biceps, the greater weight and height . . . and he had much more determination than i to use something hot, swollen and demanding, so much it stile reasoning and sanity from him. And I loved him. I wanted what he wanted-if he wanted it that much, right and wrong. Somehow we ended up on that old mattress-that filthy, smelly, stained mattress that must have known lovers long before this night. And that is where he took me, and forced in that swollen, rigid male sex part of him that had to be satisfied. It drove into my tight and resisting flesh which tore and bled. Now we had done what we both swore we'd never do.

She does not collapse on the stage. She darts onto it, and says the most stunning thing, and then darts off. It is not the weight of her disclosures that stuns the audience, but the lightness of attention as it hovers between there and not there, between her enticing proximity and her blunt distance. Joan Didion is not a penitent in confession, or a lover ready for embrace. She is not even a burlesque dancer. God no. She is a boxer. She floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee.

Music is heard in the background. As the movemnt becomes sharper; the many dancers acting but as one. She is one with her secret. As the time draws near, the woman's body begins to push. With the rhythm of the music and the beat of the dancer's feet; her secret almost revealed.

He does not look at the dancers, does not acknowledge her, sitting and staring. He is steeped in a private aural world. He drew out longer notes than her papa ever had; he was more forceful with the bow; she hadn't known the violin contained such wildness. She was reminded of the tarantella, which skipped along its notes and pulled you upward; out of yourself, come and play! But these pieces, these tangos, didn't only lift; they also plunged you downward, deep inside yourself, to the unexamined corners of your heart. Come, they whispered, come and look, see what's here and dance with it, this is music too.

What, we may well ask, is there left to live for? Why get out of bed? For this dreary round of amusing insincerity? This filthy bourgeois society that the Aristotelians have foisted upon us? No, we may still choose to live like gods, like poets. Which brings us down to dancing. Yes,” he said, turning to Malone, “that is all that’s left when love has gone.

THE DANCE OF ANGELS Suzy Kassem He spins and spins and spins To remove all three layers of him And with devout discipline He spirals to ignite the light within. He becomes a part Of the solar system And spirals to its cosmic hymn. His soul transcends through The mouth of God To join the source Of everything. He turns and turns and turns To open up windows to the universe And with each circle of love he twirls The love in his heart Radiates and bursts. His thirst for a meeting with the divine Has been his only quest since birth, And while rotating like the hand of time He sings the 'AH' of an angel's verse. As he turns and turns and turns A million emotions and vibrations submerge A luminous spectacle worth a million candles, The Sufi dancer is poetry without Words. THE DANCE OF ANGELS by Suzy Kassem

You, the woman; I, the man; this, the world: And each is the work of all. There is the muffled step in the snow; the stranger; The crippled wren; the nun; the dancer; the Jesus-wing Over the walkers in the village; and there are Many beautiful arms around us and the things we know. See how those stars tramp over the heavens on their sticks Of ancient light: with what simplicity that blue Takes eternity into the quiet cave of God, where Ceasar And Socrates, like primitive paintings on a wall, Look, with idiot eyes, on the world where we two are. You, the sought for; I, the seeker; this, the search: And each is the mission of all. For greatness is only the drayhorse that coaxes The built cart out; and where we go is reason. But genius is an enormous littleness, a trickling Of heart that covers alike the hare and the hunter. How smoothly, like the sleep of a flower, love, The grassy wind moves over night's tense meadow: See how the great wooden eyes of the forrest Stare upon the architecture of our innocence. You, the village; I, the stranger; this, the road: And each is the work of all. Then, not that man do more, or stop pity; but that he be Wider in living; that all his cities fly a clean flag... We have been alone too long, love; it is terribly late For the pierced feet on the water and we must not die now. Have you ever wondered why all the windows in heaven were broken? Have you seen the homeless in the open grave of God's hand? Do you want to aquaint the larks with the fatuous music of war? There is the muffled step in the snow; the stranger; The crippled wren; the nun; the dancer; the Jesus-wing Over the walkers in the village; and there are Many desperate arms about us and the things we know.

He felt he had been embraced, taken in beneath these warm covers, not by Frankie, but by the world itself, by God, and he lay there, listening to Frankie's heart beat against his ear, afraid to breathe he was so happy; till Frankie kissed him, and he looked up and saw, in the faint light of the streetlight, the tenderness and gratitude that had flooded Frankie's eyes, and made them glisten and sparkle like the rain outside, as he looked down at Malone with the faint smile of a man who awakens in the depths of the night to find not only is he safe, but loved. Frankie merely smiled at him, but for that look, those eyes, Malone would have given the world.

When I came to men for the first time, then did I commit the hermit's folly, the great folly: I appeared in the market-place. And when I spoke to all, I spoke to none. In the evening, however, rope-dancers were my companions, and corpses; and I myself almost a corpse. With the new morning, however, there came to me a new truth: Then did I learn to say 'Of what account to me are market-place and crowd and crowd-noise and long crowd-ears!' You higher men, learn this from me: In the market-place no one believes in higher men. But if you will speak there, very well! The crowd, however, sputters 'We are all equal.' 'You higher men,' — so sputters the crowd — 'there are no higher men, we are all equal; man is man, before God — we are all equal!' Before God! — Now, however, this God has died. Before the crowd, however, we will not be equal. You higher men, go away from the market-place! Before God! — Now however this God has died! You higher men, this God was your greatest danger. Only since he lay in the grave have you again arisen. Only now comes the great noontide, only now does the higher man become — master! Have you understood this word, O my brothers? You are frightened: Do your hearts turn giddy? Does the abyss here yawn for you? Does the hell-hound here yelp at you? Well! Take heart, you higher men! Only now does the mountain of the human future begin to work. God has died: Now we desire that the Superman live!

Yet, the cosmic view comes with a hidden cost. When I travel thousands of miles to spend a few moments in the fast-moving shadow of the moon during a total solar eclipse, sometimes I lose sight of Earth. When I pause and reflect on our expanding universe with its galaxies hurdling away from one another, embedded within the ever-stretching four-dimensional fabric of space and time, sometimes I forget that uncounted people walk this Earth without food or shelter, and that children are disproportionally represented among them. When I pour over the data that established the mysterious presence of dark matter and dark energy throughout the universe, sometimes I forget that every day, every 24 hour rotation of Earth, people kill and get killed in the name of someone else's conception of God, and that some people who do not kill in the name of God kill in the name of needs or wants of political dogma. When I track the orbits of asteroids, comets, and planets, each one a pirouetting dancer in a cosmic ballet, choreographed by the forces of gravity, sometimes I forget that too many people act in wanton disregard for the delicate interplay of Earth's atmosphere, oceans, and land, with consequences that our children and our children's children will witness and pay for with their health and wellbeing. And sometimes I forget that powerful people rarely do all they can to help those who cannot help themselves. I occasionally forget these things because however big the world is in our hearts, our minds, and our outsized digital maps, the universe is even bigger. A depressing thought to some, but a liberating thought to me.

I saw the power this respect holds in traditional cultures on our family sabbatical to Thailand and Bali. My daughter Caroline studied Balinese dance for two months with a wonderful teacher, and he proposed to stage a farewell recital for her at his school, which is also his home. When we arrived, they set up the stage, got the music ready, and then started to dress Caroline. They took a very long time dressing a six-year-old whose average attention span is about five minutes. First they draped her in a silk sarong, with a beautiful chain around her waist. Then they wrapped embroidered silk fifteen times around her chest. They put on gold armbands and bracelets. They arranged her hair and put golden flowers in it. They put on more makeup than a six-year-old could dream of. Meanwhile, I sat there getting impatient, the proud father eager to take pictures. It was getting dark. “When are they going to finish dressing her and get on with the recital?” Thirty minutes, forty-five minutes. Finally the teacher’s wife came out and took off her own golden necklace and put it around my daughter’s neck. Caroline was thrilled. When I let go of my impatience, I realized what a wonderful thing was happening. In Bali, whether a dancer is six or twenty-six, she is equally honored and respected. She is an artist who performs not for the audience but for the gods. The level of respect that Caroline was given as an artist allowed her to dance beautifully. Imagine how you would feel if you were given that respect as a child. We need to learn respect for ourselves, for one another, to value our children through valuing their bodies, their feelings, their minds. Children may be limited in what they can do, but their spirit isn’t limited.

Revelation. I understand the mechanism of my own thinking. I know precisely how I know, and my understanding is recursive. I understand the infinite regress of this self-knowing, not by proceeding step by step endlessly, but by apprehending the limit. The nature of recursive cognition is clear to me. A new meaning of the term ‘self-aware.’ Fiat logos. I know my mind in terms of a language more expressive than any I’d previously imagined. Like God creating order from chaos with an utterance, I make myself anew with this language. It is meta-self-descriptive and self-editing; not only can it describe thought, it can describe and modify its own operations as well, at all levels. What Gödel would have given to see this language, where modifying a statement causes the entire grammar to be adjusted. With this language, I can see how my mind is operating. I don’t pretend to see my own neurons firing; such claims belong to John Lilly and his LSD experiments of the sixties. What I can do is perceive the gestalts; I see the mental structures forming, interacting. I see myself thinking, and I see the equations that describe my thinking, and I see myself comprehending the equations, and I see how the equations describe their being comprehended. I know how they make up my thoughts. These thoughts. Initially I am overwhelmed by all this input, paralyzed with awareness of my self. It is hours before I can control the flood of self-describing information. I haven’t filtered it away, nor pushed it into the background. It’s become integrated into my mental processes, for use during my normal activities. It will be longer before I can take advantage of it, effortlessly and effectively, the way a dancer uses her kinesthetic knowledge. All that I once knew theoretically about my mind, I now see detailed explicitly. The undercurrents of sex, aggression, and self-preservation, translated by the conditioning of my childhood, clash with and are sometimes disguised as rational thought. I recognize all the causes of my every mood, the motives behind my every decision. What

Lady Cameron,” he said, playing his role with elan as he nodded toward Ian. “You recall our friend Lord Thornton, Marquess of Kensington, I hope?” The radiant smile Elizabeth bestowed on Ian was not at all what the dowager had insisted ought to be “polite but impartial.” It wasn’t quite like any smile she’d ever given him. “Of course I remember you, my lord,” Elizabeth said to Ian, graciously offering him her hand. “I believe this waltz is mine,” he said for the benefit of Elizabeth’s avidly interested admirers. He waited until they were near the dancers, then he tried to sound more pleasant. “You seem to be enjoying yourself tonight.” “I am,” she said idly, but when she looked up at his face she saw the coolness in his eyes; with her new understanding of her own feelings, she understood his more easily. A soft, knowing smile touched her lips as the musicians struck up a waltz; it stayed in her heart as Ian’s arm slid around her waist, and his left hand closed around her fingers, engulfing them. Overhead a hundred thousand candles burned in crystal chandeliers, but Elizabeth was back in a moonlit arbor long ago. Then as now, Ian moved to the music with effortless ease. That lovely waltz had begun something that had ended wrong, terribly wrong. Now, as she danced in his arms, she could make this waltz end much differently, and she knew it; the knowledge filled her with pride and a twinge of nervousness. She waited, expecting him to say something tender, as he had the last time. “Belhaven’s been devouring you with his eyes all night,” Ian said instead. “So have half the men in this ballroom. For a country that prides itself on its delicate manners, they sure as hell don’t extend to admiring beautiful women.” That, Elizabeth thought with a startled inner smile, was not the opening she’d been waiting for. With his current mood, Elizabeth realized, she was going to have to make her own opening. Lifting her eyes to his enigmatic golden ones, she said quietly, “Ian, have you ever wanted something very badly-something that was within your grasp-and yet you were afraid to reach out for it?” Surprised by her grave question and her use of his name, Ian tried to ignore the jealousy that had been eating at him all night. “No,” he said, scrupulously keeping the curtness from his voice as he gazed down at her alluring face. “Why do you ask? Is there something you want?” Her gaze fell from his, and she nodded at his frilled white shirtfront. “What is it you want?” “You.” Ian’s breath froze in his chest, and he stared down at her lustrous hair. “What did you just say?” She raised her eyes to his. “I said I want you, only I’m afraid that I-“ Ian’s heart slammed into his chest, and his fingers dug reflexively into her back, starting to pull her to him. “Elizabeth,” he said in a strained voice, glancing a little wildly at their avidly curious audience and resisting the impossible impulse to take her out onto the balcony, “why in God’s name would you say a thing like that to me when we’re in the middle of a damned dance floor in a crowded ballroom?” Her radiant smile widened. “I thought it seemed like exactly the right place,” she told him, watching his eyes darken with desire. “Because it’s safer?” Ian asked in disbelief, meaning safer from his ardent reaction. “No, because this is how it all began two years ago. We were in the arbor, and a waltz was playing,” she reminded him needlessly. “And you came up behind me and said, ‘Dance with me, Elizabeth.’ And-and I did,” she said, her voice trailing off at the odd expression darkening his eyes. “Remember?” she added shakily when he said absolutely nothing. His gaze held hers, and his voice was tender and rough. “Love me, Elizabeth.” Elizabeth felt a tremor run through her entire body, but she looked at him without flinching. “I do.

What?” Clarissa glanced blankly at the dark blur beside her. “Keep your eyes closed, and you will not lose your balance,” the man suggested, and she saw his hand move closer to her. He was offering it so that she would rise. Clarissa opened her mouth to refuse, then paused as his hand suddenly enclosed hers, sending a shock of sensation racing up her arm. It was such an odd feeling—excitement, wild excitement—coursing across her flesh. “I do not….” she began faintly with bewilderment, pausing when his hand lifted her chin and the man bent to stare into her eyes. Close enough to kiss, she thought vaguely. Good God, Clarissa realized, close enough to see! For one brief second she stared into the most beautiful set of clear brown eyes she’d ever seen; then he pulled back slightly, out of focus. “Trust me.” It was not so much a request as an order. But Clarissa remembered those eyes, so dark, so kind—and she nodded. Then he was tugging her out of her seat, directing her through the crowd of dancers to the middle of the floor. “Now…” His voice was calm and soothing as he turned her to face him. “Close your eyes,” he instructed, lifting her free hand to his shoulder. “Relax.” His voice was almost hypnotic, Clarissa thought vaguely. “Follow me. I will not allow you to stumble.” -Clarissa & Adrian

A flamenco dancer, lurking under a shadow, prepares of the terror of her dance. Somebody has wounded her with words, alluding to the fact that she has no fire, or ‘duende’. She knows she has to dance her way past her limitations, and that this may destroy her forever. She has to fail, or she has to die. I want to dwell for a little while on this dancer because, though a very secular example, she speaks very well for the power of human transcendence. I want you to imagine this frail woman. I want you to see her in deep shadow, and fear. When the music starts, she begins to dance, with ritual slowness. Then she stamps out the dampness from her soul. Then she stamps fire into her loins. She takes on a strange enchanted glow. With a dark tragic rage, shouting, she hurls her hungers, her doubts, her terrors, and her secular prayer for more light into the spaces around her. All fire and fate, she spins her enigma around us, and pulls into the awesome risk of her dance. She is taking herself apart before our sceptical gaze. She is disintegrating, shouting and stamping and dissolving the boundaries of her body. Soon, she becomes a wild unknown force, glowing in her death, dancing from her wound, dying in her dance. And when she stops – strangely gigantic in her new fiery stature – she is like one who has survived the most dangerous journey of all. I can see her now as she stands shining in celebration of her own death. In the silence that follows, no one moves. The fact is that she has destroyed us all. Why do I dwell on this dancer? I dwell on her because she represents for me the courage to go beyond ourselves. While she danced she became the dream of the freest and most creative people we had always wanted to be, in whatever it is we do. She was the sea we never ran away to, the spirit of wordless self-overcoming we never quite embrace. She destroyed us because we knew in our hearts that rarely do we rise to the higher challenges in our lives, or our work, or our humanity. She destroyed us because rarely do we love our tasks and our lives enough to die and thus be reborn into the divine gift of our hidden genius. We seldom try for that beautiful greatness brooding in the mystery of our blood. You can say in her own way, and in that moment, that she too was a dancer to God. That spirit of the leap into the unknown, that joyful giving of the self’s powers, that wisdom of going beyond in order to arrive here – that too is beyond words. All art is a prayer for spiritual strength. If we could be pure dancers in spirit, we would never be afraid to love, and we would love with strength and wisdom. We would not be afraid of speech, and we would be serene with silence. We would learn to live beyond words, among the highest things. We wouldn't need words. Our smile, our silences would be sufficient. Our creations and the beauty of our functions would be enough. Our giving would be our perpetual gift.

One early terracotta statuette from Catal Huyuk in Anatolia depicts an enthroned female in the act of giving birth, supported by two cat-like animals that form her seat (Plate 1). This figure has been identified as a 'birth goddess' and it is this type of early image that has led a number of feminist scholars to posit a 'reign of the goddess' in ancient Near Eastern prehistory. Maria Gimbutas, for whom such images are proof of a perfect matriarchal society in 'Old Europe' , presents an ideal vision in which a socially egalitarian matriarchal culture was overthrown by a destructive patriarchy (Gimbutas 1991). Gerda Lerner has argued for a similar situation in the ancient Near East; however, she does not discuss nude figurines at any length (Lerner 1986a: 147). More recently, critiques of the matriarchal model of prehistory have pointed out the flaws in this methodology (e.g. Conkey and Tringham 1995; Meskell 1995; Goodison and Morris 1998). In all these critiques the identification of such figures as goddesses is rejected as a modern myth. There is no archaeological evidence that these ancient communities were in fact matriarchal, nor is there any evidence that female deities were worshipped exclusively. Male gods may have worshipped simultaneously with the 'mother goddesses' if such images are indeed representations of deities. Nor do such female figures glorify or show admiration for the female body; rather they essentialise it, reducing it to nothing more nor less than a reproductive vessel. The reduction of the head and the diminution of the extremities seem to stress the female form as potentially reproductive, but to what extent this condition was seen as sexual, erotic or matriarchal is unclear. ....Despite the correct rejection of the 'Mother Goddess' and utopian matriarchy myths by recent scholarship, we should not loose track of the overwhelming evidence that the image of female nudity was indeed one of power in ancient Mesopotamia. The goddess Ishtar/Inanna was but one of several goddesses whose erotic allure was represented as a powerful attribute in the literature of the ancient Near East. In contact to the naked male body which was the focus of a variety of meanings in the visual arts, female nudity was always associated with sexuality, and in particular with powerful sexual attraction, Akkadian *kuzbu*. This sexuality was not limited to Ishtar and her cult. As a literary topos, sensuousness is a defining quality for both mortal women and goddesses. In representational art, the nude woman is portrayed in a provocative pose, as the essence of the feminine. For femininity, sexual allure, *kuzbu*, the ideal of the feminine, was thus expressed as nudity in both visual and verbal imagery. While several iconographic types of unclothed females appear in Mesopotamian representations of the historical period - nursing mothers, women in acts of sexual intercourse, entertainers such as dancers and musicians, and isolated frontally represented nudes with or without other attributes - and while these nude female images may have different iconographic functions, the ideal of femininity and female sexuality portrayed in them is similar. -Zainab Bahrani, Women of Babylon: Gender and Representation in Mesopotamia

I have talked to many people about this and it seems to be a kind of mystical experience. The preparation is unconscious, the realization happens in a flaming second. It was on Third Avenue. The trains were grinding over my head. The snow was nearly waist-high in the gutters and uncollected garbage was scattered in a dirty mess. The wind was cold, and frozen pieces of paper went scraping along the pavement. I stopped to look in a drug-store window where a latex cooch dancer was undulating by a concealed motor–and something burst in my head, a kind of light and a kind of feeling blended into an emotion which if it had spoken would have said, “My God! I belong here. Isn’t this wonderful?” Everything fell into place. I saw every face I passed. I noticed every doorway and the stairways to apartments. I looked across the street at the windows, lace curtains and potted geraniums through sooty glass. It was beautiful–but most important, I was part of it. I was no longer a stranger. I had become a New Yorker. Now there may be people who move easily into New York without travail, but most I have talked to about it have had some kind of trial by torture before acceptance. And the acceptance is a double thing. It seems to me that the city finally accepts you just as you finally accept the city. A young man in a small town, a frog in a small puddle, if he kicks his feet is able to make waves, get mud in his neighbor’s eyes–make some impression. He is known. His family is known. People watch him with some interest, whether kindly or maliciously. He comes to New York and no matter what he does, no one is impressed. He challenges the city to fight and it licks him without being aware of him. This is a dreadful blow to a small-town ego. He hates the organism that ignores him. He hates the people who look through him. And then one day he falls into place, accepts the city and does not fight it any more. It is too huge to notice him and suddenly the fact that it doesn’t notice him becomes the most delightful thing in the world. His self-consciousness evaporates. If he is dressed superbly well–there are half a million people dressed equally well. If he is in rags–there are a million ragged people. If he is tall, it is a city of tall people. If he is short the streets are full of dwarfs; if ugly, ten perfect horrors pass him in one block; if beautiful, the competition is overwhelming. If he is talented, talent is a dime a dozen. If he tries to make an impression by wearing a toga–there’s a man down the street in a leopard skin. Whatever he does or says or wears or thinks he is not unique. Once accepted this gives him perfect freedom to be himself, but unaccepted it horrifies him. I don’t think New York City is like other cities. It does not have character like Los Angeles or New Orleans. It is all characters–in fact, it is everything. It can destroy a man, but if his eyes are open it cannot bore him. New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it–once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough. All of everything is concentrated here, population, theatre, art, writing, publishing, importing, business, murder, mugging, luxury, poverty. It is all of everything. It goes all right. It is tireless and its air is charged with energy. I can work longer and harder without weariness in New York than anyplace else….

He closes his eyes. What does God see? Cromwell in the fifty-fourth year of his age, in all his weight and gravitas, his bulk wrapped in wool and fur? Or a mere flicker, an illusion, a spark beneath a shoe, a spit in the ocean, a feather in a desert, a wisp, a phantom, a needle in a haystack? If Henry is the mirror, he is the pale actor who sheds no lustre of his own, but spins in a reflected light. If the light moves he is gone. When I was in Italy, he thinks, I saw Virgins painted on every wall, I saw in every fresco the sponged blood-colour of Christ's robe. I saw the sinuous tempter that winds from a branch, and Adam's face as he was tempted. I saw that the serpent was a woman, and about her face were curls of silver-gilt; I saw her writhe about the green bough, saw it sway under her coils. I saw the lamentation of Heaven over Christ crucified, angels flying and crying at the same time. I saw torturers nimble as dancers hurling stones at St Stephen, and I saw the martyr's bored face as he waited for death. I saw a dead child cast in bronze, standing over its own corpse: and all these pictures, images, I took into myself, as some kind of prophecy or sign. But I have known men and women, better than me and closer to grace, who have meditated on every splinter of the cross, till they forget who and what they are, and observe the Saviour's blood, running in the soaked fibres of the wood. Till they believe themselves no longer captive to misfortune nor crime, nor in thrall to a useless sacrifice in an alien land. Till they see Christ's cross is the tree of life, and the truth breaks inside them, and they are saved. He sands his paper. Puts down his pen. I believe, but I do not believe enough. I said to Lambert, my prayers are with you, but in the end I only prayed for myself, that I might not suffer the same death.

We have learned in the course of this investigation that the libido which builds up religious structures regresses in the last analysis to the mother, and thus represents the real bond through which we are connected with our origins. When the Church Fathers derive the word religio from religare (to reconnect, link back), they could at least have appealed to this psychological fact in support of their view.71 As we have seen, this regressive libido conceals itself in countless symbols of the most heterogeneous nature, some masculine and some feminine—differences of sex are at bottom secondary and not nearly so important psychologically as would appear at first sight. The essence and motive force of the sacrificial drama consist in an unconscious transformation of energy, of which the ego becomes aware in much the same way as sailors are made aware of a volcanic upheaval under the sea. Of course, when we consider the beauty and sublimity of the whole conception of sacrifice and its solemn ritual, it must be admitted that a psychological formulation has a shockingly sobering effect. The dramatic concreteness of the sacrificial act is reduced to a barren abstraction, and the flourishing life of the figures is flattened into two-dimensionality. Scientific understanding is bound, unfortunately, to have regrettable effects—on one side; on the other side abstraction makes for a deepened understanding of the phenomena in question. Thus we come to realize that the figures in the mythical drama possess qualities that are interchangeable, because they do not have the same “existential” meaning as the concrete figures of the physical world. The latter suffer tragedy, perhaps, in the real sense, whereas the others merely enact it against the subjective backcloth of introspective consciousness. The boldest speculations of the human mind concerning the nature of the phenomenal world, namely that the wheeling stars and the whole course of human history are but the phantasmagoria of a divine dream, become, when applied to the inner drama, a scientific probability. The essential thing in the mythical drama is not the concreteness of the figures, nor is it important what sort of an animal is sacrificed or what sort of god it represents; what alone is important is that an act of sacrifice takes place, that a process of transformation is going on in the unconscious whose dynamism, whose contents and whose subject are themselves unknown but become visible indirectly to the conscious mind by stimulating the imaginative material at its disposal, clothing themselves in it like the dancers who clothe themselves in the skins of animals or the priests in the skins of their human victims.

But the worshippers and admirers of these gods delight in imitating their scandalous iniquities, and are nowise concerned that the republic be less depraved and licentious. Only let it remain undefeated, they say, only let it flourish and abound in resources; let it be glorious by its victories, or still better, secure in peace; and what matters it to us? This is our concern, that every man be able to increase his wealth so as to supply his daily prodigalities, and so that the powerful may subject the weak for their own purposes. Let the poor court the rich for a living, and that under their protection they may enjoy a sluggish tranquillity; and let the rich abuse the poor as their dependants, to minister to their pride. Let the people applaud not those who protect their interests, but those who provide them with pleasure. Let no severe duty be commanded, no impurity forbidden. Let kings estimate their prosperity, not by the righteousness, but by the servility of their subjects. Let the provinces stand loyal to the kings, not as moral guides, but as lords of their possessions and purveyors of their pleasures; not with a hearty reverence, but a crooked and servile fear. Let the laws take cognizance rather of the injury done to another man's property, than of that done to one's own person. If a man be a nuisance to his neighbor, or injure his property, family, or person, let him be actionable; but in his own affairs let everyone with impunity do what he will in company with his own family, and with those who willingly join him. Let there be a plentiful supply of public prostitutes for every one who wishes to use them, but specially for those who are too poor to keep one for their private use. Let there be erected houses of the largest and most ornate description: in these let there be provided the most sumptuous banquets, where every one who pleases may, by day or night, play, drink, vomit, dissipate. Let there be everywhere heard the rustling of dancers, the loud, immodest laughter of the theatre; let a succession of the most cruel and the most voluptuous pleasures maintain a perpetual excitement. If such happiness is distasteful to any, let him be branded as a public enemy; and if any attempt to modify or put an end to it let him be silenced, banished, put an end to. Let these be reckoned the true gods, who procure for the people this condition of things, and preserve it when once possessed. Let them be worshipped as they wish; let them demand whatever games they please, from or with their own worshippers; only let them secure that such felicity be not imperilled by foe, plague, or disaster of any kind. What sane man would compare a republic such as this, I will not say to the Roman empire, but to the palace of Sardanapalus, the ancient king who was so abandoned to pleasures, that he caused it to be inscribed on his tomb, that now that he was dead, he possessed only those things which he had swallowed and consumed by his appetites while alive? If these men had such a king as this, who, while self-indulgent, should lay no severe restraint on them, they would more enthusiastically consecrate to him a temple and a flamen than the ancient Romans did to Romulus.

Just like a dancer’s body finds its points and an equestrian incorporates her body weight into the movement of the horse, the Christian learns how to melt her will into God’s.

On the ninth day of the festival, Abram and Mikael positioned themselves to watch the grand parade of the gods. It proceeded down the Processional Way from Esagila all the way past the temple of Ishtar in the north of the city. A large flock of white doves, the bird of the goddess, was released from Ishtar’s temple as they passed, creating a spectacle of peaceful liberation. The parade continued out through the vainglorious Ishtar Gate on to another temple by the river, where they held a banquet of the gods. This was the most public of events. Throngs of people crowded the lanes of the Processional Way, trying to get a glimpse of the gods in their glorious chariots covered with dazzling jewels. Cultic musicians, dancers, and singers accompanied the parade through the city. Priests, royalty and visiting dignitaries received front row seats to the spectacle.

I got used to birds: small black birds flying up from behind a building like God had tossed up a handful of currants, birds squalling in the parking lot of the grocery store (drowning the hum of industrial refrigerators), chachalacas -brown robed nuns to the spangled disco dancer peacocks - cackling in the dust of our yard. I got used to the chatters, squeaks, squalls, peeps, calls that sounded like bitter laughter, whistles, flutes, calls that sounded like souls ascending to heaven. I got used to dust and flatness, to sunsets like pink water pouring from the sky, flooding the earth with orange soda. I got used to wind: the hot, cruel wind of afternoon, the merciful magnolia breeze of night. I got used to it. But then I had to go.

Whether you sweep the toilet of a school or you make cloths. Whether you take pictures of dancers or you are a full-time house wife. Whether you are a village jester or the president of a company, never trivialize what you do. Your work, no matter how small you think it is can make a difference in someone's life. It all begins with you. It's not what you do, it's how you do it. I have seen a traffic police bring minutes of joy and happiness to people's lives in a way that Presidents of nations cannot. Anytime you trivialize what gives you an income, you sell yourself cheap and lose your dignity. Do your work with all excitement, joy and positivity. Learn and grow from it. And if you haven't found a job to do, look for one with the same zeal as you would do the actual work. Good morning and may God bless our efforts. Emi Iyalla

Shiva! The Mahadev. The God of Gods. Destroyer of Evil. Passionate lover. Fierce warrior. Consummate dancer. Charismatic leader. All-powerful, yet incorruptible. A quick wit, accompanied by an equally quick and fearsome temper.

Pole Dancers vs. The Fantasy Not every stripper is a struggling single mom working nights to pay tuition for a paralegal degree. Thank God most pole dancing sluts are just pole dancing sluts.

Fallon heard three voices in the kitchen. Quietly, Fallon walked and stopped at the wall. He heard Shrader’s voice. Her low, husky voice bouncing off the walls as Willow and Blaine read Braille out loud. Shrader stood in Fallon's kitchen, watching Blaine bite his lip as his finger traced along the Braille. He did that when he was concentrating. “It says…may God have Mercy?” Willow asked. “May the peace of God be with you,” Shrader says, her voice low. Fallon heard something slam down on the table. “I hate Braille!” Willow said furiously. “I don’t want to learn it!” “You need to learn it Willow.” Shrader says patiently. “You need to learn how to read.” “I can read just fine.” “How many fingers am I holding up?” “Um…grey.” “What?” “I see grey. I cannot see your fingers.” “Exactly. You can’t see. Reading and learning Braille can fix that…well, reading anyway.” "Why do I have to be blind?" Willow says softly, so no one else can hear. "What have I done…?" ”You have done nothing to deserve this Willow. You shouldn’t blame yourself or God for this.” “Well then who do I blame?” Willow demanded. Fallon heard a sob. Blaine spoke up. “You were born blind because your eyes were too pretty to take this world.” Fallon quietly emerged from the doorway and Blaine looks up. Fallon presses a finger to his lips and motions Blaine to keep going. “You are given this so you could rise.” Blaine went on. “Your life is a swing. The more you move your legs, the higher you go. Soon you’ll be ready to fly from your highest swing. If you believe, pray, and try, you’ll fly.” “Are you ready?” Shrader asked. Willow swiped at her eyes with her hand. “I’m ready now. I’m ready to fly from my highest swing.

Ending the Year in Praise Praise the Lord! Praise God in his heavenly dwelling; praise him in his mighty heaven! Praise him for his mighty works; praise his unequaled greatness! Praise him with a blast of the trumpet; praise him with the lyre and harp! . . . Let everything that lives sing praises to the Lord! Praise the Lord! Psalm 150:1-3, 6 What a way to end the year—praising the Lord for his mighty works, his unequaled greatness. This psalm, also called the last hallelujah, invites us to join the praises to God in the holy place. The praise is not half-hearted; it is full-force praise with musical instruments—tambourine, stringed instruments, the lyre, the cymbals—and dancing, praise from everyone. When we offer God praise, we’re doing what we were created for, even if we’re not the best musician or dancer. All of us can raise our voices singing hymns, choruses, and new songs to the Lord. How has God blessed you, your family, friends, or church this year? What mighty works has he accomplished? What progress have you made in an area in which you’ve struggled? What prayers has God answered? What new attributes or aspects of God have you discovered or experienced in the past year? Lift up your voice or whatever instrument you play, and praise the Lord for these specific things as you pray this psalm aloud.   LORD, I join those in your heavenly dwelling to worship you for your mighty works. I praise your unequaled greatness. I praise you with my whole heart for how you’ve sustained me in the year that is ending, for your faithfulness, love, and provision. Thank you for how you’ll be with me each day in the new year. Let everything that lives sing praises to the Lord!   TO THE EAR OF GOD EVERYTHING HE CREATED MAKES EXQUISITE MUSIC, AND MAN JOINED IN THE PAEAN OF PRAISE UNTIL HE FELL, THEN THERE CAME IN THE FRANTIC DISCORD OF SIN. THE REALIZATION OF REDEMPTION BRINGS MAN BY WAY OF THE MINOR NOTE OF REPENTANCE BACK INTO TUNE WITH PRAISE AGAIN. Oswald Chambers (1874-1917)

In a Burst of Oneness When wax and wick work best, light and heat are all that's left. Like a candle, our wick of spirit is encased in our humanity, and when our spirit is touched, we light up until all we know melts and changes shape for the burn of our experience. Repeatedly, our sweat and struggle burns our sense of self and world away, so that our Divine spark can be released, again and again. These moments of Spirit-Lighting-Up not only rearrange our lives, but they light and warm those who stay near. In such moments, we become one with what we see, and this sudden Oneness is what the faithful of all paths have called Love. And in the illumination of Oneness called Love, all that's left is a willingness toward birth, an urge to be touched by something timeless and fresh. All that's left is the want of deep parts in strangers. To relish the waking over being awake, the burning over being burned, the loving over being loved. When we can be—no matter how briefly—at one with what we have in common with all life, we are rewarded beyond attachment and ownership. This is the difference between becoming a singer and becoming the song. This is the best of ambition: that the dancer melts into the dance, and the lover melts into the act of love, and the builder melts into the thing being built, until in a burst of Oneness, dancer and lover and builder are one. Perhaps momentarily, when swimming with the stream, we are the stream; when moving with the music, we are the music; when rocking the wounded, we are the suffering. Perhaps momentarily, when thinking without masks, we are pure thought; when believing without doubt, we are God. Perhaps love is an instrument we play for all we're worth in an orchestra yet to be convened. Perhaps this is why, in the fullest moments of loving or knowing or being, we go nameless and timeless and breathless—everything about us used up, like a candle, burned over and over, just to light entire rooms with our flicker.

You have to approach God or whatever is there sideways, at an angle. Through dance or art or, okay, yoga, or breathing practices – something that opens the doorways of the senses, makes you accessible, because God isn’t accessible. You are.

For all their differences, holy rollers and Ghost Dancers had much in common. Americans who took up holiness sought to free the spirit by lifting the heavy hand of scientific rationalism and engaging emotionally with Christ . . . Parallel ideas circulated in the Ghost Dance, which advanced bodily healing and cultural resurgence through spirit intervention.

You have to approach God or whatever is there sideways, at an angle. Through dance or art or, okay, yoga, or breathing practices – something that opens the doorways of the senses, makes you accessible, because God isn’t accessible. You are.” ― Amy Weintraub, TEMPLE DANCER

The archduke candidates lined up facing the shrine, as the musicians and sword dancers had, then knelt to touch the stage. “We are those who offer prayers and gratitude to the gods who have created the world...” they began, and no sooner were the words intoned than a magic circle appeared

It is true that the worlds of the other gods are not without paradox. But none of these worlds is as disrupted by it as the world of Dionysus. He, the nurturer and the god of rapture; he, the god who is forever praised as the giver of wine which removes all sorrow and care; he, the deliverer and healer, “the delight of mortals”, “the god of many joys”, the dancer and ecstatic lover, “the bestower of riches”, the “benefactor” – this god who is the most delightful of all the gods is also the most frightful. No single Greek god even approaches Dionysus in the horror of his epithets, which bear witness to a savagery that is absolutely without mercy. In fact, one must evoke the memory of the monstrous horror of eternal darkness to find anything at all comparable. He is called the “render of men”, “the eater of raw flesh”, “who delights in the sword and bloodshed”. Correspondingly we hear not only of human sacrifice in his cult but also of the ghastly ritual in which a man is torn to pieces.

The people who observed Francis in the earliest days of his spiritual movement witnessed him and his merry band of men acting, at times, like "God's jugglers." Francis himself called them "jongleurs de Dieu." Jongleur is a medieval French word meaning a wandering minstrel, a public entertainer, a professional storyteller. A jongleur was a troubadour— which also sometimes meant that he was an acrobat, fiddler, dancer, and poet. Troubadours were soulful in ways that made others want to hear and be entertained by them. By identifying himself as one of God's jugglers, Francis claimed who he wanted to be, and it looked very little like a priest.

The Ballad of Philippe Petit —for the world's greatest rope dancer Philippe Petit hangs his high wire in the third eye of God, fills the dull air with blue fire, all alone on the big city street, Little Phillip, Philippe Petit. Philippe Petit, high priest of daring, feels wind pulse in his feet, flying high on his mystical string, between tall towers above the street. Little Phillip, Philippe Petit. Little Phillip by the Golden Fleece, making Seventh Avenue sing. He draws a magic circle of chalk, rides his cycle around in a ring, Little Phillip, Philippe Petit. Little Phillip, clown gargoyle, spewing light on the grey street, rope dances twirling sticks of fire, bright sparkle of the dark street, Little Phillip, Philippe Petit. Philippe Petit juggles fire and balls, winks at Zeus, laughs at Mars, pulls Newton's beard, sups with God, cycling his way from heaven to street. Little Phillip, Philippe Petit. Little Phillip, when we get there, you'll surely be on high, juggling molecules for your maker on the wide streets of the sky, Little Phillip, Philippe Petit. Philippe Petit, The King of Heaven has a brilliant little fool juggling fire at his footstool. A light on the dark city street, A light, a light, Philippe Petit.

When I pause and reflect on our expanding universe, with its galaxies hurtling away from one another, embedded within the ever-stretching, fourdimensional fabric of space and time, sometimes I forget that uncounted people walk this Earth without food or shelter, and that children are disproportionately represented among them. When I pore over the data that establish the mysterious presence of dark matter and dark energy throughout the universe, sometimes I forget that every day—every twenty-four-hour rotation of Earth—people kill and get killed in the name of someone else’s conception of God, and that some people who do not kill in the name of God, kill in the name of needs or wants of political dogma. When I track the orbits of asteroids, comets, and planets, each one a pirouetting dancer in a cosmic ballet, choreographed by the forces of gravity, sometimes I forget that too many people act in wanton disregard for the delicate interplay of Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, and land, with consequences that our children and our children’s children will witness and pay for with their health and well-being. And sometimes I forget that powerful people rarely do all they can to help those who cannot help themselves. I occasionally forget those things because, however big the world is—in our hearts, our minds, and our outsized digital maps—the universe is even bigger. A depressing thought to some, but a liberating thought to me.

say that information exists in and of itself is akin to speaking of spin without the top, of ripples without water, of a dance without the dancer, or of the Cheshire Cat’s grin without the cat.

As divine dancer and herbinger of auspiciousness, the devadasi was the devotee's conduit to God. She was in a sense the high priestess, end out with powers to sanctify everything she touched. While ancient queens are supposed to have been brave warriors, and even scholars, the truly evolved and educated women emerged with the Bhakti movement of medieval India. They were the devadasis. They were the women of pride.

God is a dancer. He is not a creator in the sense of a painter; he is a creator in the sense of a dancer.

On what basis do we humans possess this stunning ability to affirm graciousness and love as the heart of reality when the here and now demands the opposite affirmation? The answer to that can only be that somehow we apprehend in the here and now - despite its often brutal suggestion that death and darkness are the final answer - a gracious absolute that lies beyond. Like the classical theist who looks at a rose and is able to perceive the creator and sustainer who gives it existence at that precise moment, so too do we sense the gracious Dancer who is Lord over all dances, including the horrible one that now threatens us, and who will bring us all to a new day and a new loving dance.

I’m a terrible dancer,” I said. “Did you know that?” “You were a dancer in Threll, weren’t you?” “I was, but only by memory. I counted the steps. Simple, if I practiced enough. I did not even need music.” He chuckled. “Brute force. I should have known.” Then, after a moment, “I think that may be the first time I’ve ever heard you admit weakness aloud.” Gods. It probably was. I lifted my eyes to him and placed a finger over my lips. “Only for you to know. And I only tell you this because I don’t want to embarrass myself when I ask you to dance with me.” Silence. Such deep silence that the vestiges of distant music mixed with the suddenly deafening pound of my heartbeat. Max stood there, back straight, hands clasped behind his back. For once, I could not read his expression. “Or,” I said, lightly, “will you look back at this as the beginning of your downfall?” “I…” He let out a breath, a chuckle, tucked his hands into his pockets. Then removed them. “My answer hinges upon one condition.” “What?” He took a step forward, and then another. I did, too, until our bodies were directly in front of each other, until I felt his warm hand slip into mine. “No counting,” he said. “Only this once.” “Only this once.

Revelation. I understand the mechanism of my own thinking. I know precisely how I know, and my understanding is recursive. I understand the infinite regress of this self-knowing, not by proceeding step by step endlessly, but by apprehending the limit. The nature of recursive cognition is clear to me. A new meaning of the term "self-aware". Fiat logos I know my mind in terms of a language more expressive than any I'd previously imagined. Like God creating order from chaos with an utterance, I make myself anew with this language. It is meta-self-descriptive and self-editing; not only can it describe thought, it can describe and modify its own operations as well, at all levels. What Gödel would have given to see this language, where modifying a statement causes the entire grammar to be adjusted. With this language, I can see how my mind is operating. I don't pretend to see my own neurons firing; such claims belong to John Lilly and his LSD experiments of the sixties. What I can do is perceive the gestalts; I see the mental structures forming, interacting. I see myself thinking, and I see the equations that describe my thinking, and I see myself comprehending the equations, and I see how the equations describe their being comprehended. I know how they make up my thoughts. These thoughts. *** Initially I am overwhelmed by all this input, paralyzed with awareness of my self. It is hours before I can control the flood of self-describing information. I haven't filtered it away, nor pushed it to the background. It's become integrated into my mental processes, for use during my normal activities. It will be longer before I can take advantage of it, effortlessly and effectively, the way a dancer uses her kinesthetic knowledge. All that I once knew theoretically about my mind, I now see detailed explicitly. The undercurrents of sex, aggression, and self-preservation, translated by the conditioning of my childhood, clash with and are sometimes disguised as rational thought. I recognize all the causes of my every mood, the motives behind my every decision. What can I do with this knowledge? Much of what is conventionally described as "personality" is at my discretion; the higher-level aspects of my psyche define who I am now. I can send my mind into a variety of mental or emotional states, yet remain ever aware of the state and able to restore my original condition.

Aleksandr, are you even listening to me? You better not be chasing that ballet dancer, or I swear to God I will bury you ten feet under myself.” I expel an exasperated breath. “Please. You wouldn’t get your hands so dirty.” “Well, maybe not, but that’s why I have River now. To dig holes for all my bodies.” I hear him laughing in the background.

Fire-breathing bitch-queen.” “She was fire, and light, and ash, and embers. She was Aelin Fireheart, and she bowed for no one and nothing, save the crown that was hers by blood and survival and triumph.” “She looked at them, at the three males who meant everything—more than everything. Then she smiled with every last shred of courage, of desperation, of hope for the glimmer of that glorious future. 'Let’s go rattle the stars.'” “To whatever end.” “Behind them, across the hall, the dancers shattered their roses on the floor, and Aedion grinned at his queen as the entire world went to hell.” “If you're a monster, I'm a monster.” "'Who is that?' Nesryn asked. Aedion smiled. 'Rowan.'” “'Where will we go?' 'I hear hell is particularly nice at this time of year.'” “She was a whirling cloud of death, a queen of shadows, and these men were already carrion.” “But she was her own champion now.” “Whatever you had to do to survive, whatever you did from spite or rage or selfishness … I don’t give a damn. You’re here—and you’re perfect. You always were, and you always will be.” “The wrath Chaol found in Aelin’s eyes was world-ending. 'You bring my court into this, Chaol,' Aelin said with lethal softness, 'and I don’t care what you were to me, or what you have done to help me. You betray them, you hurt them, and I don’t care how long it takes, or how far you go: I’ll burn you and your gods-damned kingdom to ash. Then you’ll learn just how much of a monster I can be.'” “'Thank you for the oil,' he added. 'My skin was a little dry.'” “And at long last, Aelin Ashryver Galathynius was home.” “I don’t make threats. Only promises.” “My name is Aelin Ashryver Galathynius. And I am the Queen of Terrasen.

SIT IN A CHAIR AND KEEP still. Let the dancer’s shoulders emerge from your shoulders, the dancer’s chest from your chest, the dancer’s loins from your loins, the dancer’s hips and thighs from yours; and from your silence the throat that makes a sound, and from your bafflement a clear song to which the dancer moves, and let him serve God in beauty.

The heart of the anointed dancer is one who accepts that they are not perfect, that because of sin, they continue to struggle to maintain their salvation... Daily they fight for their salvation, but the ability to know that God loves them ... opening themselves to the will of God, that in spite of their sinful nature are able to worship God in Spirit and in truth ... God, has provided a righteousness we cannot produce by ourselves. That righteousness goes by the name Jesus Christ!!                 If we as dance ministers, stand up to the

God in heaven, Windham. Did Her Grace have no influence on her menfolk whatsoever?” “Of course, she did. I am a very good dancer. I have some conversation. I know how to dress and how to flirt with the wallflowers.” “But one expects a certain dignity from the ducal household. Did your papa have no influence on you?” “A telling influence. Thanks to him, my brothers and I learned to indulge in the foregoing mischief and a great deal more without getting caught.” Darius eyed his companion skeptically. “And here I thought you must have been spouting King James in utero, reciting the royal succession by the time you were out of nappies, and strutting about with a quizzing glass by the age of seven.” “That would be more my brother Gayle, though Anna has gotten him over the worst of it. The man is too serious by half.” “And you’re not?” Darius was carefully surveying the surrounds as he posed this question. “I am the soul of levity,” Val rejoined straight-faced.

Dancer had lined up a row of tequila shots in front of us, issuing everyone salt and limes before declaring, “Drink up, bitches! If God wanted us sober, he wouldn’t have made shot glasses so cute!

Stars of Fire by Stewart Stafford At the Gate of Pleiades, Lies the playground of the Deities, At The Golden Gate of the Ecliptic, The Gods' plot and remain cryptic. Between the claws of Scorpio and Cancer, At the mercy of the great Zodiacal dancer. The dilemma on the horns of Aries, Brushes asides all adversaries. Venus trails stardust from her hair, As a supernova across the galaxy flares, A shooting star is the spear of Orion, More is the mane of Leo the lion. Man's Gemini may someday show before us, As chaste Virgo or the mighty Taurus, Or be inanimate as the scales of Libra, Or spread as Cancer or an unchecked fever. Perhaps these pilgrims have visited us before, When Sagittarius took the form of the wise Centaur, Or when Pisces flopped in an Aquarian boat, Or on a lazy hill to the Capricorn goat. © Stewart Stafford, 2021. All rights reserved.

The Catholic God is stiff. Too stiff. Only understands His people when they pray in a foreign language! He leaves no room to manoeuvre at all. You know what the Catholic fada tells them every Sunday? That his God is a jealous God. He does not like to share with others. Now, isn't the heaven wide enough for as many gods as want to fit in?

...It Isn't actually much of an encouragement to me to read the stories about Jesus. I might as well take encouragement from watching a great athlete run a four-minute mile. Sure, it's a fine sight, but at my age and with my weight I would be lucky to do a mile in 10 minutes, let alone four. I can watch a ballet dancer on stage with great delight, not because I can copy him, but precisely because I know I can't.