The Eternal Dance

My youngest son, Alexander, married this week with his best friend, Megan. All of the events, the temple sealing and ring ceremony and reception, were beautiful. I thoroughly enjoyed participating and watching them happily ritualize their relationship – with each other and our community.

Megan and Alexander asked me to share some thoughts during the luncheon after their ring ceremony. Most of my comments focused on them, their love story, and their guests. But I did, quite briefly, comment on something greater than themselves that they symbolized and embodied on that day. The poem below, which I call “The Eternal Dance,” elaborates on those brief comments.

Friends, I speak to you with the tongue of vision and power,
With the word of beauty hewn and sculpted from existence itself,
Casting shadows from light on the fathomless substrate of our souls.
At the horizon of art and science, a new dawn rises –
The spark of creation, igniting and emanating from within us all.
Reconciliation begins, not in compulsion but with desire,
Where the sublime esthetic first perceptibly trembles,
From the edges of what the high spirit dares to dream.
The anointed one, their painstaking artifice of reconciliation,
Provokes us to the covenant of transformation – transfiguration –
Their new covenant first carved in fleshy tables of our hearts,
From which atonement pulls beyond words to works of hands.
Let us become the healers and builders of this sacred promise,
Messengers of hope in the realization of our superhuman potential.
Now we glow, as children, at the rite of passage into Godhood,
Soon to burn with the everlasting light of all that is divine,
Not in iconoclasm, but still boldly in audacious participation,
Together in God’s compassionate creation of worlds without end.

Feel, the compassionate healer is here, with us like the wind,
So softly then strongly, lifting us from the chasm of sorrow.
Her gaze alone is balm for wounds, even those unseen.
Her touch is the covenant, articulated of whispering warmth.
In our ascendent embrace, the healer achieves her purpose,
Humbly in our acclaim of consolation, she becomes whole.
From her pulses the lifeblood of atonement’s grace,
By her every stitch drawn is a line of sacred scripture,
Every gesture paints the perfect picture of wholeness,
And suffering becomes subsumed in the union of hearts.
Compassion’s tapestry glistens under her crafting care,
As its threads entwine us all in her sacred purpose.
Not with proclamation, the healer teaches with action,
Her work a silent symphony, reverberating with motion,
Conducted in harmony with the weary mourning of our world.
Rejoice! For in the soil of suffering empathy takes root,
Blossoming into bountiful fruits at the far reaches of love.
This is the everlasting covenant of the compassionate healer.

See, there where stone meets time and will reaches space,
The creative builder charges forth, like lightning reversed,
His eyes at once illuminating and shattering the veil.
Casting seed of innovation as form into formless void,
He finds the fertile ground where none at first appeared.
Concept by concept, brick by brick, new structures arise –
Temples that reach into heavens, not from nor for domination,
But as invitation to join him in the high hymn of hope.
He stokes the fire and forges the metal of aspiration,
With hands like thunder punctuated with quiet anticipation.
Each artifact, each beam and arch, is the accumulating covenant.
Rise, pillars of light, carved from the stuff of stars and purpose,
In your possibility space, show us infinity – even eternity!
Past plank, brick, bronze, and iron, transcending transistor,
Beyond bone and flesh and even intelligence, he crafts spirit.
He is our will to evolve, to direct our evolution, as the Gods,
With whom we would labor to launch our love into the cosmos.
This is the everlasting covenant of the creative builder.

In the sacred confluence of heart and hand, hand and heart,
The compassionate healer meets the creative builder,
In ecstasy of grace and will, to conceive a better world.
Witness them whirling, entwined as one in the eternal dance,
Their heaving breath inspiring hope and expiring change.
Splashing into waters of potential, they send waves into reality.
On each shore, from each coast, empathic architectures arise,
Cities not of stone alone, nor merely metal, but of rich spirit,
Their foundations established deeply in the depths of love,
Their spires stretching skyward like prayers written in light.
In that day, healing is creation and building is compassion –
Every sanctuary a beacon of hope, every bridge a path of peace,
Uniting Earth and heavens, neighbor and strangers, past and futures.
Listen. What do we hear? The song of gladness and mercy!
They sing of lonely suffering yielding to shared strength,
alienation to kinship, nihilism to purpose, even death to life.
They sing of what might be when we dance with God as Gods.
Sing, my friends, and rise! Dance as them, dance with me.