I love books. My husband can spend hours in a hardware store and I can spend hours in a bookstore. Fortunately, my husband also likes bookstores but I don’t know, I just can’t reciprocate with the hardware stores.

Over the years, I have developed a very reliable technique for choosing books. I let them call to me. I just run my eye or sometimes my hand along a bookshelf and somehow a book will call to me. I then have a more rational process I go through (table of contents, trial read, author etc) to confirm that this is the one for me, right now, in this moment in my life. I know it sounds strange but it works every time!

I was visiting one of my favourite bookstores in Montville in the Sunshine coast hinterland when a little book called to me. It was called “Opening to The Invitation”. Some of you may be familiar with the poem “The Invitation” written by Oriah Mountain Dreamer – I have to admit my rational mind did think Really? But once I read this little poem I knew this book was the right one for me. It tells the story of how Oriah (Mountain Dreamer was given to her by the Native American shaman she studied with and was apprenticed to) came to write this prose poem. She is one of those people who, after two years of serious, chronic illness, were called to choose between a life that “was a good life, just not my life” and a life that connected her to herself and her dreams and nourished her health.

She wrote the poem “in a quiet moment late at night when tiredness stopped my head from censoring the words that flowed from my heart onto the page”. Oriah later included it in a little newsletter she edited and was surprised when it “went viral”. So much so, that people did not know who this Oriah Mountain Dreamer was (lots were inaccurate), some even changed some of the wording and she had to finally learn about letting go of control.

When you read her story, it is clear that different people have brought their own perspective to the poem but for me there is a call for authenticity in relationships in this prose poem. Those of you who study the Enneagram will be aware that some personality types have a more profound need for authenticity but everyone wants relationships that they can trust, that are reliable and genuine. Connection is the key. I am talking about a connection that both gives and receives something of each other.

She starts “The Invitation” with:
“It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.”

Because our western world mostly sells the superficial and values things that are often not the most important, many long for and seek genuine connection – I know I do. Some people deeply desire trustworthy and reliable relationships but hold back because of doubt or fear of the opposite.

“I want to know if you can live with failure,
yours or mine,
and still stand on the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon
‘Yes!’
It doesn’t interest me to know where you live
Or how much money you have…”

Some people find discussing the inner, more meaningful part of a person just too intense, too much or feel safer keeping to the superficial in their relationships. Some want genuine relationships but also place value on what you do and have a need for you to know what they do or have done. All that this tells us is that relationships offer us opportunities for growth. And in the end, there is no avoiding the importance of your relationship with yourself.

She finishes with:
“I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company
you keep
in the empty moments.”

It seems to me that the desire for authenticity asks of me to care, to be true, to give and to be accepting in my relationships. It needs me to open my heart, my mind and my embodied knowing, not just my heart and ignore my mind and my instincts, not just my mind and ignore my heart but all three, open and working in concert. That is no always easy.

To read the full poem visit Oriah’s website at http://www.oriahmountaindreamer.com