COME-UNION
I have this happy memory; a memory from a time in my younger life when there weren’t many things to be happy about.
It was a flash of colour. A dance of DNA woven in ribbons. It was coming into a moment of unity amongst a sea of duality. I was about 8 years old.
It was May Day and we were dancing around a May Pole in my school. I didn’t have many friends. I was too weird and often felt overwhelmed which the other kids mistook for shyness. In truth, I found everything too loud and it hurt my nervous system but I didn’t have the words to describe this then. So I sought solitude and the company of the rare individuals who held quietness in their soul that I found soothing.
Yet I also craved to belong. Like many young children, I looked to those around me for guidance as to how the world worked, yet found very little to go on. My instinct told me that everything was alive and connected, yet hardly anyone I knew acted as if this was the case.
Occasionally however, something would happen that would give me cause to validate my inner wisdom. The May Day Dance was one of those occasions. From the outside, it was a gaggle of young children winding coloured ribbons around a hastily erected pole in the schoolyard. On the inside however, it was an enactment of universal truth. For me, as I danced in and out of the other ribbon strands that my classmates held, I saw the fabric of the universe itself being woven like a story of evolution in play. For me, the ribbons were separate beings that surrendered their air born freedom into the weave of collective creation. In dancing around the pole, I stopped being the lonely American kid and became one with the come-unity of dancers, expressing joy at creating something together that we could not have done apart.
Of course, this sounds very ‘high brow’ and well thought through many years later, as I write these words. My 8 year old sensed this and yet could not have articulated it in this way. The gift of time and experience allows us to weave intellectual and emotional content behind the fabric of our early formative experiences. All I knew was that dancing in this way made me feel alive and part of something bigger than my 8-year-old body.
As a child, I craved Unity. I longed for deep connection with the world around me and sought it in the moment when I felt safe to do so, often with the more than human world who I trusted far more than the human one.
The dance of the May Pole in the ancient Celtic calendar was a celebration of the height of Spring: of fertility, new life and new lover(s). In dancing it, we come into union with the separate parts of ourselves – male/female, light/dark, conscious/unconscious. We literally dance unity alive and emerge from our come-union anew. We celebrate the joy of being alive.
This week, perhaps you celebrated May Day or perhaps it passed you by? Either way, you have the opportunity to dance alive some new aspects of your story for the coming summer and autumn season.
What seemingly separate strands of your life story would you like to weave together into a new creation of some kind?
Where are you feeling alone and separate?
How can you come into a deeper connection with the flow of life all around you?
How can you stop and simply celebrate the joy of being alive more often?
All of these questions and more will open up as you dance around the May Pole of your future. It is up to you, to take the separate strands and weave them into a beautiful new story that inspires you and moves you into the future.
At Beyond Human Stories, we specialize in weaving new narratives of Unity.
Why not come and dance your story alive with us this Spring?
