TO BE DANCED INTO HER UNRAVELING

Apprenticeship to Love: The crooked path of sacred marriage (August 9, 2026)

TODAY'S QUESTION

What will today's winds blow my way? And, how will sail these winds?

TODAY’S MEDITATION

It has always amazed me, how we get along as men and women. We are, for all of our similarities, so different. And especially so, the more we are attracted to each other. Or so it appears to me. So it has been, for me, in my life. A mystery. Only made more intelligible to me —navigable, perhaps, more than intelligible— so late in my life, as I allow the paradox and the polarity of it all.

I think my problems have stemmed from not allowing the paradox and polarity to be the heart of the experience. The very reason for the experience, rather than the obstacle to it. Not just sex. But love, as a dynamic, fecund thing of becoming.

...

Wilhelm Reich believed, based on his experiences as a therapist and researcher in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, that fascism is rooted in sexual dysfunction at a social level. Reich saw a society in which men and women were largely not able to experience their sexuality in a healthy way, in which only primitive forms of "masculinity" and "femininity" were acceptable. Individuals in such a society were afraid of their own sexuality, and of others. They were therefore predisposed to fear-mongering, demagoguery, extremism, and conspiracy theories.

This sounds all too familiar, today.

...

I have both under-appreciated the complexity of my sexuality, and given my limited understanding too much importance.

Now I am trying to complicate things.

I may not be as "primitive" in my sense of how men and women should behave, but I am still habitually thinking and behaving in accord with cultural norms about "masculine" ways of being. The hallmarks of maturity as an adult are words like "responsible," "effective," "successful," "purposeful," etc. I am still limited by ways this culture I've been born into —and by my privileges in this culture— and the ways it has demonized and tried to control masculine's other: the "feminine." As a culture, we are afraid of the feminine, and in this life I'm learning how much I am afraid.

Is it Her ability to give birth? To know intuitively? To resist my/our best efforts to control Her?

Whatever it is that I am afraid of, I am coming to understand that I can never really know love until I discover a way to hold this other, the polarity of my masculine, gently. With reverence. In a way that allows Her to be the beauty She is, the nourishment She is.

...

She said to me, You are the Reverend. ...
She loves so much.
Be in awe of Her.
Be the stable supportive energy She can be safe in. To be who She is.
Meet Her needs, even those unexpressed.
Listen to Her every step of the way.
Be in sacred service to Her.

...

The one I love is a dancer. And she yearns to be danced.

The fascist in every one of us desperately wants this dancer to conform to our way. To colour inside the lines. To behave. To dance within the figures we proscribe.

But the one I love is so much more than that and yearns to be danced —held, yes held, but with so much love and so much devotion and so much unwavering trust that she comes undone and in her unravelling reveals unimaginable beauty, unreasonable knowing.

...

I know the temptation to impose my will. It's one of the reasons I resist the "warrior" trope. The trope is a temptation, a habitual response for of all of us who are afraid of the untamed, the fecund, the "too-much." We allow our fear to bring us into battle, and to make all of our experience and either/or, a black/white. To make life —and love— uncomplicated.

But these things are complicated. Just as the one I love is complicated. As I am complicated, when I allow myself to become still and aware.

Aware, nothing is simpler than to know that to allow my love to dance, freely, within the firm yet flexible structure of my devotion, is all she needs to be herself.

TODAY’S INSPIRATIONS

🌀It’s difficult for our minds to live in a constant state of acceptance, because it goes against its tendency to be in control. The mind is programmed to keep us safe and prefers working with familiarities, with what it already knows. Yoga introduces another perspective: the unknown. When we step into the unknown, we step into the field of all possibilities, always fresh, always new, always open for the creation of new things and a fertile ground of abundance. (Kundalini Yoga School)

🌀“Once we open up to the flow of energy within our body, we can also open up to the flow of energy in the universe.” (Wilhelm Reich)

🌀I trust you (My beloved, she who must be held, gently, so that she may fully unravel into all of her beauty)