"This is the Fifth Greatest Event of my life! The first two were giving birth to my two daughters and experiencing motherhood. The third was when I went to St. Croix on disaster relief. The fourth was when I flew to Europe to do disaster relief. The fifth has been the Shadow Dance Workshops. I have experienced birth, disaster and rebirth. "
This is a picture of Sweet Medicine Valley, former home of the Long Dance. We do it now here at the Spirit Earth Path "ranch" half-way between Albuquerque and Santa Fe in the San Pedro mountains. c
If you read all the way to the bottom of this page you'll come across a "Note" which says that the 2003 Dance was "one of the most powerful ever." Along came 2004. 2005, 2006, '07 and now 2008.. well, read away.... coyote
Here is what some 2006 Long Dancers said;
Hi Dick,
I suppose things are getting back to what passes for normal around the SpiritPath ranch. I've been trying to understand what this Long Dance has meant, and all kinds images, thoughts, and emotions have been swirling around ever since I got back to Chicago on Thursday afternoon. You've done scores of Long Dances, and you must sometimes feel that you've done enough, that it's about run its course for you. I have tried to imagine what it would be like to hold a Long Dance where I live, like you do at your place. It must be hard to do that. Part of the allure for me is traveling to a place that's different from where I live but that resonates with the place of my childhood (the edge of the Mojave desert). But I am thinking it must be hard for you to conjure up the enthusiasm for the Long Dance where you spend every day, in such familiar surroundings. I hope it's still magical for you and Elizabeth. As the letter you showed me from Sol attests, the Dance is quite magical for most of us. It still is for me, and I am amazed by that fact. I thought I would have become bored by now, and, lately, at each Long Dance I have found myself expecting at any moment to feel jaded and cynical. But that expectation has always dissipated during the Long Dance, or maybe it does before that, during one of the sunrise ceremonies.
The Long Dance seems to wake me up somehow, to some truths that I have forgotten during the year. Contrary to my expectations, this Long Dance turned out to be about my forging and renewing connections with other Long Dancers. I decided to reach out more to others, and I experienced connections with these people that I had never felt before or had even imagined could be possible a few years ago. At previous Long Dances, I often felt afraid and self-conscious, and I learned at this Long Dance that there is nothing to be afraid of. They are all wonderful people, Dick, and I am grateful to have come to know you, Elizabeth, and so many others through the Dance. Life is short, and this is a gift beyond measure.
John Hall
I have tried, for years to conceive something, characteristics, of some way to emote this experience. True religion has no bounds. Only Faith and Belief, it's silent knowings. This is where we come together. This is where the Medicine people come to Dance. They don't even know of their Medicine or that I consider them Medicine people. (Do they even know they are?) They are the humblest expressions of the Divine. Light within light captured and sent to appear for us all. They are all Eagles in their own rights and ways. With arms wide open they say, "Come into the Circle and let Love be your guide." 11 years has gone by since I started. The Dance is a multitude of passages and doors simultaneously opened. When a person truly views the horizon of Dancing the Sacred, one can only see the limitless self reflected. This is the well of fulfillment. This is the way it has always been. These ways of connection. This gift of Dancing, of Being, of connecting, of loving. These are the ways of the Divine. To love and experience ourselves, each other. Words merely fall as waste to hold in some pattern, to describe the absolute. The futility of definition supersedes all tapping of the keyboard or the pen... But, I will always try to hold some form to explain this to my limiting mind's sight....
Children, come, Dance yourselves
Out into the Worlds and the Spirit
This is the way to be a whole self
Without confines or bars to hold
Children, come, Dance yourselves
Into the talking Drum's beaten prayer
A song sung, a story undulating out
Tells me of your Dream, life's story
Children, come, Dance yourselves
Drunken monks babbling chants
Vibration has awakened your souls
Hearts speaking truths silently
Children, come, Dance yourselves
Hold your rightful place in the world
Stand as Peace, as Warriors Divine
Battling for Rights of Remembrance
Children, come, Dance yourselves
Within light of each other, birthing
A new day, the forgotten self rises
To drink the Nectars of all Creation
Children, stay, Dance yourselves
As mystery's signatures, awakened,
Acknowledging the blessed selves
United, the Dance of Life, unfolding...
This spider's web, is known, and has no name. This "thing we do" touches all life. There is no separation, only the idea of it. I sit on the drum, in the center. Able to perceive the vastness of the worlds, but not hold or understand it. Each Dancer who comes before the drum, their song is sung by the drum. While it continues to sing the song of the dance. It is a subtle tone and change, but always done. It is the drum that honors in this way. It is also we who honor each other in this way. It does not matter where we sit or how we hold this way. It does not matter which way we hold. The seed, is the knowing that it exists. Faith means you must get yourself ready to receive what comes. Because, being of the divine is far greater than one can imagine. It takes a Tribe to reflect the Sacred in us all. It takes a Tribe to emerge and appear at the Well (each other) to give it's Nectars to the world. It takes a Tribe to hold one another in difference and in similarity. To see the difference as a view yet unseen, yet held in trust by another. To take similarity and use it to uphold the journey home to the Sacred self.
It has been an Honor to Dance. The Drum shall always be my place, my way, my prayer. Because I am the light of Creation dancing among the Light of Creation. We are the mirror, within the mirror, within the mirror.... Pilamiya-Yelo, Wicho-Zani, "Peh pai'i-eh Neh" (One who opens the doors for the people to receive their Medicine") Steven
Hello Dear Elizabeth and Richard,
Here it is almost 3AM Monday. My sleep pattern is out of whack. I've been up since 1:00. I'm wide awake now after having had to pull over on the drive to Santa Fe to take a nap, then falling asleep mid-afternoon after arriving safely at home. My back is sore from dancing all night. My spirit is good.
Elizabeth - I really appreciated your sharing about increasing your capacity for love. That is very much my path as well. My intention for the coming year is to connect with more and more people with whom I can freely give and receive love. (In other words, I'm stealing your idea!!!) I count you and Richard as loved ones in my increasing circle.
What I want to do is to just be with the gratitude of having received so abundantly this weekend - the Dance, stewardship of the men's bundle and the sword for a time, the presence of you and Elizabeth in my life, the give-away, the spirit name from your teach, bracelet, little red heart, the love of so many people ... I want to spend some time steeping in gratitude and in soul-level deserving. I want to be that blooming cactus for a while (actually forever) - no guilt, no story about not deserving. Then, once I really get that I can receive with no strings, from my heart's yearning to give of what I have received I will give to the Long Dance of my time and support.
I love the two of you, not actually for the Long Dance you organized and held space for but for the opportunity you two give me to give and receive love myself. Thank you for modeling what my heart is gathering more and more courage to remember.
Sol - Power of Drinking Light
Long Dance from "Little Dreamer"
I know just how I'm going to do this.
The endurance people say to keep steps small and slow.
They say the body will appreciate a rhythm,
that it will know what is expected of it
and calibrate itself to the rhythm that is set;
I imagine the drummers will take care of that.
Never out of breath, never break a sweat.
The endurance people know how to do this,
and I will apply their experience
to survive this craziness that I have signed up for.
What was I thinking?
My experience will be inner.
It doesn't matter that this body can't keep up.
It doesn't matter that I'm paralyzed in dance,
paralyzed to express with movement and sound.
None of that matters.
I'm in the right place.
The card jumped out of the deck last March.
"Is this my year to come to the Long Dance?"
Coyote turns over the Seven of Wands. "Do you know what this card is?"
"It's this year's card." I am awestruck, yet not. Not really.
I've been hit by lightning so many times this year
that I can smell the rain as our eyes meet and hold.
Coyote's gaze is soft and dear.
"Looks like we'll be seeing you at the Long Dance."
I commit, with the heart of a Fool.
Maybe I'll be able to do this.
The light flashes, and I prepare to control, to limit, to pace myself.
Wearing black, I will disappear.
But the Dance breaks out and takes my body with it.
Swirling, swooping, gliding, it takes flight,
weaving through the Dancers,
sprinkling some kind of fairy dust from wings and bells.
Magic, perhaps?
It goes against the flow of the circle, wanting to move sun-wise.
It finds an empty spot and rises high on invisible thermals,
whirling, twirling, uncontained, unfettered.
That certainly sounds uninhibited.
What happened to the one who stood in the line,
who gave up her token and looked into the fractured mirror,
who heard the whoosh! of wings
and who walked solemnly with the Raven?
"Strong heart" made her tremble and weep.
I'm dying, she said, each whoosh! confirming the thought,
as Dancer after Dancer entered quietly until each pole was full.
As she died, she remembered who she was raised to be,
and glimpsed who she was born to be.
Touching the tree, touching the silk,
slamming back into being raised again and again,
the pain of seeing, tasting, feeling who she was born to be
all-encompassing and unbearable.
Please let me forget, but the banner was relentless.
And then she was set free no need to forget even Death forgotten
in the whirling, twirling.
At Midnight the Dance and the Dream are One.
No-time, No-space, Dreamtime, Dancespace.
The Dream weaves its way through everything, through all dimensions
Sometimes honoring, sometimes startling,
At once enduring and fleeting,
Quiet, cooing, howling, yipping, laughing to the starry skies,
Gasping at the sight of each shooting star.
Oh..what Magic, to swim in the courage of these hearts.
Little Dreamer is danced into existence, breathed into Being,
And I am a swirling cosmic fusion of Spirit and Soul,
of Mind and Matter, of all Directions and the stillness of Center.
Those who prayed for us blew gently on the coals of Soul.
I don't know how or what to do anymore.
But the Dance does.
(My gratitude, respect and love to everyone those who drummed, danced, prayed, encouraged, let go, rested, dreamed, trusted, stayed, returned, transformed and loved -- we were and are all aspects of the wholeness of the Dance)
When dancing in the barely-lit early morning hours, when I looked at a Long Dancer I "saw" a silhouette of human figure, akin to one I've seen in Native American artwork. A suspended, standing human figure with its feet a little more than hip-width apart, with its hands out to the sides- maybe 20-30 degrees? The figure itself was flat black, and outlined in fire or very bright light. When I blinked it was gone. Joan V
I have basically had a ""case of the WOWS"" since the Long Dance. For many reasons, but one of the main underpinnings is the love that was experienced. I want to thank you both, and my Spirit-driven fellow dancers, along with all who held sacred space, for the opportunity to be a part of the Dance. And I want to tell you a little story. I called my dad ( who is 90 years old) after the Dance and at the end of the conversation I told him I loved him. He then said "Well, I love you too. I guess everyone loves everyone."" Then he paused and added "" I only wish that that were true".
As Elizabeth shared in her goodbye to us on the Give-Away morning, we are the change we want to see and the energy of Love is the essence of Spirit and what energized the Dance. I like thinking that opposite of Love is Fear because it allows me to think through my fears and Fears in a compassionate and loving way that honors my Self and my humanity.
Thank you again for inviting me to be a part of something that has brought a smile to my life and bounce to my step. I had stated out loud that my intents in the Dance were to connect with like-minded "seekers" and to be loved and nurtured, and all the intents manifested.
Namaste
Carey ( Goddess of the Sunsets!)
Now for the other parts.
It will take, as someone said, 360 days to process it all and then we will be ready for the next one. Jack Hebrank emailed saying that he felt like the guy in the last scene of "Brigadoon" re-membering the magic of that fabled place. That image, and my own memory of the movie, led me to see the Long Dance as just such a place, a Brigadoon that descends to the Earth once each year to enchant those who would dance and sing there. (Rent that one sometime if you haven't seen it.)
Next appearance of our "Brigadoon", Memorial Day weekend, 2009
:>)
The Long Dance is a combination of ceremonial experiences, one sweat lodge and a programmed series of workshops which all culminate in the dusk-to-dawn Long Dance. The Dance goes from Friday evening through Monday afternoon and our 2008 Dance marked our 26th year...though cumulatively it seems more like our 30th. The 2001 the Dance was held in Sweet Medicine Valley, That's a picture of it at the top of the page, from then on however it, and all other dances, have been held at the "ranch". Email your snail mail address if you want to be on our list for all events in 2008-'09 or in the future.
The Shadow Dance is shorter than the Long Dance, usually a Friday-Sunday experience, but it is, nonetheless, a wonder-filled vehicle for personal growth.A typical Shadow Dance consists of one sweat lodge, a series of two to three workshops that focus on work with the "shadow side" of our personalities. At the dance we will be exploring the "Shadow Masculine and Feminine" through the power of dance, discovering the "Inner Teacher" through journaling techniques, learning about the mystery and magic of the Tarot and its link with intuition, drumming to move from Mind dominance to Body awareness, and, in general, re-discovering our own power to create happier everyday lives! (Not bad for a weekends work.) A Shadow Dance used to be a "movable feast", but the logistics involved, not to mention the cost of gas, dictates that all our Dance events will be held here at the Spirit Earth Path retreat center.
For more information please Contact Us