Tom's April 2003 article

Article from Epistle to the Presbyterians, April/May 2003

by Thomas A. Sweet

Of all the journals and magazines to which I subscribe, I think I enjoy Heron Dance more than any other. Now that’s saying something since I have subscribed to The Sporting News and Sports Illustrated since I was a boy and there have been professional journals along the way in which I have been much interested. But Heron Dance is special. It engages not only my heart and mind, it enraptures my soul. It speaks to my yearnings and to my best self. It’s about art. It’s about beauty. It’s about the integrity of one’s own journey. It’s about awareness, appreciation, seeing, life! Doug Peacock, a grizzly bear advocate who wrote the wonderful book Grizzly Years says of Heron Dance: “Heron Dance, like its winged archetype, reaches out to the wild Earth with grace and gentle beauty. It is full of great courage and generosity of spirit, an anodyne for despair and the desolation of modern culture.”

Heron Dance at its roots is really about the personal odyssey of its founder, Rod MacIver. Now 47 years old (hey, that’s my age, too!), Rod has had successful careers in real estate and investment research but, after a bout with life-threatening cancer, decided that neither of those careers were calling to his heart. So he followed his bliss and, eight years ago, began publishing Heron Dance as his attempt to explore beauty and love as central values around which to base a life. As with most magazines and journals, this endeavor is not lucrative and Rod struggles to pay the bills. But his joie de vivre is contagious and I love that he is doing what he wants to be doing. Always, every issue, he challenges me to examine my own life and to keep me honest about what is important to me, to live true to my own longings, convictions, and gifts. I often have remarked to you that Annie Dillard’s book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, changed my life more than any book I’ve ever read, that she and it really precipitated the pivotal conversion experience of my life. For me, Heron Dance is a worthy successor to Pilgrim and keeps me attuned in my own life to what is good and true and beautiful.

Somewhere along the path of Heron Dance, Rod shared this observation about his life that found instant resonance in mine:

I have two entities in me. One is out in the world, talking,

doing. It’s meeting women and moving and shaking and

making dramatic gestures, articulate arguments, and im-

pressive statements. The other is quiet. It’s being, not

doing. It’s watching. Waiting. Loving. That Quiet One

knows so much if only I could slow down and listen.

Both elements of my life are necessary. Being out in the world, talking, doing. Being reclusive, quiet, solitary. My tendency, given the somewhat public nature of my life, is to allow the former to dominate. But I am sensing these days that the Quiet One within me wants to be heard in a way I seldom have allowed, the Quiet One who knows so much if only I could slow down and listen. I am not sure right now what that means for my life, but I am increasingly desirous to hear what the Quiet One knows and would teach me if only I would clear space and time. As a first step in honoring the Quiet One within, I have made arrangements to spend two weeks in May in solitude on the New Jersey Shore, on the sands of my family’s childhood vacations, listening, discerning, praying, paying attention, listening...

Is the Quiet One who knows so much if only you could slow down and listen being heard in your life?

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