As I was rehearsing The Actual Dance the other day I was stopped in my tracks when I delivered this line. What if the person I love does not invite me to be their dance partner? Then what!
Silly me, I have been delivering this line with an assumption built into my mind that a person with whom I have a love relationship would of course invite me in at that most intimate of moments.
Of course this is not and cannot always be true. There are many circumstances one can imagine when the person you love will not allow you in or even near them during this process. First, and perhaps most likely, you are not the primary love of their life. It may just be that a friend or a sibling, even a child, whom you love deeply and dearly has a spouse or other closer love.
There are myriad conditions, some logistical and others more complex. What if the person lives continents away and never even told you what was going on?
More complex. People with Alzheimer’s disease. The husband who doesn’t know the wife of even 50 years is perhaps in no position to invite her or anyone in? Or the story I was just told about the husband of thirty plus years who had been in a coma and was near the end. He regains consciousness for just the last few days, yet he was delirious. He did not recognize anyone or even know where he was (home) and exhibited an entirely different personality.
All of these circumstances I am sure have happened and are true. In the current dimension of life and time and place, the here and now, these are often horribly difficult times.
Yet, we learn in the The Actual Dance, that being the dance partner of someone you love is the “ultimate consummation of your love.” As difficult as it is, perhaps the most difficult thing you will ever face or do, there is within the actual dance a beauty and dignity to be found.
So what if there is no invitation? I can hardly imagine what I would have done if Susan pushed be me out rather than inviting me in.
I have had to think about this issue for some time. I have come to understand that the invitation is not a real-world phenomenon. Rather, the Invitation comes in the Ballroom dimension. Whatever is happening externally – in the hospital room, the bed room, the doctor’s office, etc. – the Invitation and the Ballroom are always there and waiting, ‘waiting for you and your loved one to step out onto the dance floor.”
It is inside and has to be found. It happens and is experienced. To be loved and to love are most preciously experienced in the heart.