Truth-speaking

Photo by J. W. Valentine

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, / There is a field. I’ll meet you there. / When the soul lies down in the grass, / The world is too full to talk about. / Ideas, language, even the phrase each other / Doesn’t make any sense. — Rumi

I’m not sure this is a conversation that everyone has with themselves—but, for a long time I’ve had it with myself: “What’s my truth?” With growing intensity of late, especially when someone begins a conversation with: ”At your age, you . . .” my mind short circuits the rest of the conversation because in some way I feel assaulted, as if I’ve broken some law that prohibits me from standing tall and speaking with authority and even dancing at my age.

More importantly, I immediately recognize that the person speaking either deliberately or by cultural default has set parameters around my beingness. Caging me into behaviors and actions that don’t suit me. Stunned by the reverberation of her words, I decided to do some self-exploration about why I might behave differently “at my age.”

Maybe it was three decades ago with the introduction to the work of Liz Lerman, who set the dance world on its ear by boldly and defiantly showing dance on stage through a different lens. She demonstrated the durability and beauty of older bodies moving through space and expanded the vision of dance beyond age, within the scope of the creative spirit with unlimited possibilities.

But, I suspect that my truth arrived much earlier, an imprinting that came about when I began dancing as a child. Enamored by the art form of classical ballet I reveled in the spaciousness, classical music and the insanely odd shapes that were expected of me. Much to everyone’s surprise in my early 20s I decided to dance professionally. As I stepped into that arena and as difficult as it was to grasp the connection, I came to an understanding that my body was both an instrument as a dancer and a temple as a sacred vessel of God. That became my unspoken truth.

The unavoidable backdrop for my early involvement in dance was the Civil Rights movement. The whole idea of speaking truth to power was to empower common folk (people who appeared to have no power) through a nonviolent political approach as vital participants in the life of America, and perhaps the world. It was a way for groups of people to rise up in speaking truth to authoritarian regimes and the foundation was a pamphlet “Speak Truth to Power: A Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence.” This kind of alternative inquiry includes the work of Mahatma Gandhi, Vaclav Havel, Nelson Mandela, Elie Wiesel, and others.

But, I believe this concept goes back much further to Biblical times. As I continued my search for why I behave and believe the way I do, another kind of memorable invitation to truthspeaking was through participation in a drumming circle. Tamarack Song’s Truthspeaking: Ancestral Ways To Hear and Speak the Voice of the Heart was easily dropped into conversations until I eventually read his work. The book is based on Song’s early explorations into wildlife and ancestral healing by way of his grandmother and later his apprenticeship among American Indian Elders. His writings are supplemented by academic studies in world religions, languages, and indigenous cultures. He is definitely a humble servant and off the grid kind of fellow, but no less rooted in a wisdom from which we all can benefit:

The air is not laced with cursing and there is no shame or judgment…There is no need for doctrine as each person knows her own Truth. Even without it being spoken you can read it in her Heart.

While I wasn’t necessarily an outdoors kind of person in terms of nature walks, etc., I was outside a lot and spent time in nature—reading, watching butterflies, contemplative swinging, observing the nighttime sky, touching flower petals. I had no idea how his teachings combined with my early leanings into the sacredness of the human form as instrument and temple would weave its way into my life and work.

In a society seduced by youthfulness from skin-care to excessive exercise, from lotions, creams and tonics to the perfect attire for any event, from hair coloring to teeth whitening—emboldened by mere outer appearances— is it any wonder we are wandering or at the very least designating specific behaviors for the wiser persons in our society? A better question might be to ask ourselves what can God do with us, here and now? I think a lot.

Some times we have to dig a little deeper to find truth and understand our role in bringing about a life-affirming paradigm shift. If God could allow Sarah to have a baby beyond child-bearing years and Moses — no longer a spring chicken—led his people out of Egypt in an amazing ordeal:

Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and turned the sea into dry land, and the waters were divided. The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left (Exodus 14:21-22).

Certainly there must be something grand for me to do and be. And the same God that was in them is in me, who am I to say anything but “yes!” again , and again, and again. As many “yeses” as it takes until I’m no longer in this body, wearing this particular garment, acting in this particular role!

Classical ballet is an art form of unimaginable beauty and physical pain, endurable and mostly joy-filled as is life, to be perfectly honest. We are not delivered here with a scroll of ho-hums and good luck, but with sacred texts filled with numerous stories of challenges, apparent unsolvable problems, setbacks and unbelievable accomplishments. We are no less witnesses of and participants in astonishing actions which make us revolutionaries of life, whatever it is we are meant to accomplish. We change, we grow, we age, and we can make as much of the latter as we choose.

I’ve lived my entire life on the edge in nonconformance, but I also come across people who spend their lives limiting themselves and underestimating the ability of God to work through them. Not accessing that place of stillness to leverage power we sometimes don’t even make the minimal effort of listening to rouse ourselves from the depths of despair for a grand old resurrection. Our own!

Do the words surrender and letting go keep coming up? For sure. But so does compassion and self-care to fulfill the tasks at hand, which at times seem burdensome and too heavy to bear. We are meant to rise up and be voices of change through whatever mechanism and skills we are given.

I’m not talking about striving for a leadership role, becoming a CEO of an organization or starting a movement. Just be who you need to be on any day. I’m talking about attuning to your inner essence, whatever that may be and if you do that your truth will rise to the top like cream on milk, effortlessly.

And you will be an expression of compassion, hope and love—something the world needs now. What’s your TRUTH?