What an amazing weekend it has been.  I’ll start with mid-afternoon on Friday, when I left Toronto – heading up the Airport Road for a weekend dance camp –  and bring you up to date.

Airport Road starts right near Pearson Airport in the city and goes north-east mostly, through the Toronto suburbs, through the Hockley Valley, right up to Georgian Bay.  It’s not just another road in my life though.  I first travelled up Airport Road about 28 years ago.  My 2nd husband, Barry by name, had been renting a farm in the summer for a number of years and the first summer we were together we took his daughter, my three children, and our assorted neuroses up to the farm for a month.  It was good, but it didn’t have water access and so the next year we found a “cabin” to rent – a little farther up Airport Road and a bit to the west – which was in fact a beautiful summer cottage on 10 acres, with a 5-acre private pond, a sauna near the pond, and a hot tub.  We spent a few Augusts there together with our children and mostly that was good too.  After we split up I continued for 1 more year renting the cabin in the summer, sharing it with my good friend Ben; we each took a month for ourselves but either of us could come up on any summer weekend.  That was the summer that I wrote the first draft of my Ph.D. thesis … at the cabin.  I’ve been up Airport Road a few times since then; we’ve taken my Mom out for mother’s day brunch at a restaurant in that area and I’ve gone up to Shelbourne (on the way to the cabin) to visit my friends Barb and Meaghan.  When I first went up the countryside started just about 10 minutes beyond the airport, this time it was closer to 45 minutes before I felt I’d even left the city.  But that was the smallest change!

I was struck, as I drove in the sunshine with the top down, how different I was from that time 27 or so years ago that I first drove up Airport Road.  Then I was basically still a single Mom with three young children.  Because my first marriage was such a brutal experience, and because I was an early feminist who was well versed in the need to be on the defensive for others trying to control and limit me, one of the things that was always a part of the baggage that travelled with me (albeit not packed into a suitcase, just there in a very basic sense) was the need to draw a very sharp and clear line between myself and “the other”.  By the time I was travelling up there post-Barry I was clearly stronger in my own identity, determinedly not needing a man to feel complete in any way.  It was pretty much always about family and children … until now.  This time I was driving up the road feeling quite at peace with myself and eager to participate in a weekend of sacred circle dance.

Our first dance together began Friday evening right after dinner, and from the first steps we took it was remarkable.  I’ve always thought of sacred circle dance as a moving meditation; when you dance – even when the steps are simple ones – you have to stay “present in the dance” or you trip yourself up.  Now I’m a pretty good dancer, my sense of rhythm is excellent and I have a good sense of where the various parts of my body are at any given time.  Even so, I realized right away with one of the first dances we did that the magic of the dance was that you had to stay present, stay thinking only about the experience of the dance.  That means that the other noisy thoughts that run around in my head have to drift away; each time my mind would wander to something I should have done or something that I need to get done … my feet would lose their clarity.  In a circle of about 40 people who are all “present in the moment” there’s a kind of calm energy that builds and spreads around the circle.  As June Watts, one of the well-known dance leaders says:  ”When I dance I know who I am, I feel centered and connected with all things.”  As one of the dancers began to lead a dance called Stones she talked about actual stones and encouraged us to think about a stone that somehow spoke to us, that said something to us that was important in defining who we are.  She asked us to dream on that stone and if we actually stumbled upon a stone that “spoke to us” we should bring it along the next morning and add it to the center of the circle.   She, unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately –  for me, spoke more and longer than I’d have liked, but the truth is that as soon as she mentioned a self-defining stone, an image came to my mind.

It was about 20 years ago and I was on the Holocaust and Hope Educator’s Study Trip to Germany, Poland and Israel.  We visited many of the concentration/death camps that summer and in most places there were reconstructed barracks and crematoria that were preserved as historical sites.   In August 1943, the prisoners at Treblinka – likely my aunts, uncles, grandparents among them – led an uprising.  Of the 1,000 Jewish prisoners who were alive when the revolt took place, approximately 200 managed to break out. Only 60 of those who escaped were alive at the end of the war to tell the world about the horrors of Treblinka. Of the prisoners who remained in the camp after the uprising, some were killed on the spot, whilst the rest were forced to demolish the remaining structures and obliterate all traces of the camp’s murderous activities; the camp area was ploughed over and trees were planted. The camp was turned into a farm.  It’s estimated that over 900,000 Jews were murdered at Treblinka between July 1942 and August 1943.  You enter the camp walking along what appears to be a railroad line running through a beautiful forest.  And then as you turn a corner the trees end and all you can see, for as far as you can see, are stones.  Small ones representing small communities, mid-size ones representing larger communities, and quite tall ones representing whole countries; communities and countries where the Jews were lost.  As powerful as visiting the camps that had preserved the barracks and so on, the day that I fell to pieces was the day we visited Treblinka.  My history, my past … was stones.  I’ve never been able to reach back into my family’s past to understand how I came to be who I am; I couldn’t share the experience that so many of my friends had of being able to say “yes, I’m like this because I had a great-grandmother who was like this.”  That search for identity, I realized that day, couldn’t be one that looked back … at least not very far back.  I’ve carried that image with me ever since; the weight of the stones of my history a burden on my shoulders and heavy in my heart.

Did I want to dream about this?  Absolutely not!  But in a way I did dream about it.  The dream, though, was filled with light.  What came to my heart and spirit as I slept was a strong sense of being free of the past, of knowing that although this was my history it wasn’t my present.  I awoke on Saturday morning feeling incredibly free, as if I’d turned some innermost corner that allowed me to view the world from a fresh perspective.  I was able to see things in a new light, without the shadows of the past dimming the beauty of what’s around me.

I’d made the plan to attend this weekend-long dance camp many months ago.  A few weeks ago David was confronted with some work-related stuff that would unfold in the days immediately following dance camp and, prone as he is to nervousness, he was really anxious about those days.  I did ask him if he’d rather I stay home but of course his response was to go because he knows how important these dance weekends are to me.  So I went.  On Saturday morning though, looking through eyes that were at peace, I saw something else.  I saw how defended I have been for most of my life about being independent; not allowing anyone else to control me or direct my life or tell me who to be or how to be … that’s always been very important to me.  Heaven knows there have been many who have tried!  But that mantra of “I’m an independent woman and I do what I want” was constant and loud.  As I danced that morning I began to experience something new.  ”Yes, I am strong and independent,” my heart spoke to me, “yes, I love being here and dancing and feeling the warmth and strength of this accepting community and the joy of the earth and the sky and the movement of my feet.”  And then I thought about David at home on his own and I realized that I wanted to be there with him as he got through this weekend before he had to return to work.  Not because I felt obligated.  Not because of any guilt or uncertainty.  Just because I loved him and knew that if I was facing something fearful I’d want him to be close to me as well.  During the morning dance break I started to give thought to going home late that night after the evening dance ended, which would mean I’d miss all of Sunday and the full cycle of the dance experience.  Still a little nervous about this new view of things I soon found myself in a conversation with one of the other dancers.  She’s spent 30 years with her partner and was telling me that only recently she’d have the same kind of shift in thinking; strength and independence coming from love and partnership and not from the barriers we construct for ourselves.  And so I made the decision that I would surprise David by coming home early … just to be with him.

We had a long break in the afternoon and I took that opportunity to step back into my past for a moment.  The years we’d summered in this area we had often gone to visit “the honey man” on Hockley Valley Road.  As it will soon be Rosh Hashana, a time when honey represent our hopes for sweetness in the coming year, I decided to see if he was still there.  With the top of my car down, my heart filled with peace and joy, and the sun shining, I headed off.  To my delight, Eagle’s Nest Honey was still there.  It looked pretty much the way it had looked over the past 27 years.  The pictures of the original owner, the white-haired man that we’d first known, were still on the wall.  There was still a shelf with little wee honey jars and popsicle sticks so that you could taste all the different kinds of honey they had.  I asked the man who was taking care of me about that owner and he told me that he’d died a few years ago and that he’d initially worked for him and taken over the business when he died.  He also told me that he’d lost about 1/3 of his bees a few years ago and had feared that he’d not be able to continue making and selling honey, but fortunately for me he’d managed to get through that.  With jars of Blueberry Honey in hand I headed back for the afternoon and evening dances that awaited me.

Before the evening dance began I’d packed up and loaded my car.  It was around 10 p.m., after dancing around a campfire, that I headed out for home.  It took me about an hour and a half to get back to town and it was only as I was pulling in, realizing that David would already be asleep, that I started to think about how I was going to let him know I was home early without scaring him half to death.  I knew that if I walked into our room and just gave him a kiss he’d indeed wake up, but likely that awakening would come replete with a scream of fear which would leave both of us shaking.  So instead I just left my bags in the car, crept quietly up the stairs – our great watchdog Isis not even making a sound – and climbed into the shower.  David did wake up a bit nervous when he realized that he heard the shower running but by the time he’d walked from the bed to the bathroom he’d figured out that I must be home.   Was I glad that I’d decided to return home early?  You bet!

Feels like I’ve turned another corner.  Behind me, on that old road, is the feeling of oppression from expectations and the control of others.  Behind me are the sorrows of the past; it’s not that the realities of my past have changed, it’s just that they seem to no longer be travelling with me.   Where I’m standing today I feel stronger, clearer, calmer, and happier than I have in quite a long time.  I feel free to really be who I am.

I know that the week ahead will be a busy one.  First, David has his work issue to get through.  Monday I have to go for my Yellow Fever shot in preparation for going to Kenya and Tanzania in October. Tuesday night my sister Molly and her family are coming for a BBQ, Wednesday evening we’re taking my mother, Ellen and her friend Ely to see the Met film of the opera Carmen, and Thursday is my meditation group.   I still have to  finish organizing my Peace Education workshop for Nairobi, and submit some more material for the participants to download and work with beforehand.  I’m going to include some experiences that bring people together into communities that can work for peace together … some dance, some choral reading, some singing.  I’m no longer worrying about whether or not that’s what’s expected of me.  It’s who I am and what I have to share, and I’m feeling more able to be true to my heart than I have in a long while.  I’ll leave you with this clip of music from one of my favorite dances.  It’s called Bilvavi (which comes from Psalms) and urges us to build a sanctuary within our hearts,  guiding us to the awareness that we must first rediscover the purpose of our own lives.