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Joining the Hallowed Dance



THE WHEEL


At the first strokes of the fiddle bow

the dancers rise from their seats.

The dance begins to shape itself

in the crowd, as couples join,

and couples join couples, their movement

together lightening their feet.

They move in the ancient circle

of the dance. The dance and the song

call each other into being. Soon

they are one — rapt in a single

rapture, so that even the night

has its clarity, and time

is the wheel that brings it round.


In this rapture the dead return.

Sorrow is gone from them.

They are light. They step

into the steps of the living

and turn with them in the dance

in the sweet enclosure

of the song, and timeless

is the wheel that brings it round.


~ Wendell Berry


As we approach Hallow’s Eve and All Saint’s Day, our attention is drawn wherever we look to ghosts, goblins, and spirits of all kinds-some good, some bad, some Saints, and some sinners, just like us folks who remain alive. Accounts of spirits returning to earth abound in folklore both on All Saint’s Day and especially on the day before.


Here at Merry Mount, some folks have said that they feel a strange presence as they approach the bottom platform of the darkly stained staircase that leads to the second floor of our farmhouse. While I have not experienced that feeling myself, I do welcome it. In fact, any spirit that may want to sit and relax for a while may join me on the front porch, or better yet, as Wendell Berry writes, may want to join us in a dance or song.



I like to contemplate Berry's "Wheel"-a place that allows information from the past to dance with the receptors of the present in an intimate sphere of awareness.



How about a song and dance?


Yours truly,


CPW





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