The Invitation

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It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. Oriah is the author of several best-selling books: The Invitation (now translated into more than fifteen languages), The Dance, and The Call: Discovering Why You Are Here. Her book, What We Ache For: Creativity and the Unfolding of Your Soul, explores the challenges, rewards, and necessity of doing our creative work. Opening the Invitation is a small book that shares Oriah’s story of writing and sharing her much-loved poem, “The Invitation.” All five of Oriah’s books are published by HarperONE, San Francisco. Using story and sharing meditations Oriah’s writing explores how to follow the thread of our deepest heart's longing into a life where we can choose joy without denying the difficulties we each face. Facing the challenges and finding the joy of living who we are is further explored on her Sounds True CD, Your Heart’s Prayer. Oriah has shared her insights and stories with audiences throughout the world at conferences and retreats and through radio and TV appearances (CBC, TVO, Oprah, NPR, PBS, Wisdom Network.) In the first stanza of ‘The Invitation’ the speaker begins as she does approximately half of the stanzas, with the phrase, “It doesn’t interest me.” While the line will become commonplace and lose some of its impact after reading it in different iterations, the first appearance is impactful. It is an interesting way to begin ‘The Invitation’ and provides a pleasing hook for the reader who will want to know more. 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. imagine, it makes you question all this trying, this dark certainty that everything... More The Invitation

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. The Invitation’is a twelve stanza poem that is divided into uneven sets of lines. The range in length from five to twelve with no specific pattern of rhyme. There are very important moments of repetition though that help to unify and direct the text. Every stanza begins with either the phrase “It doesn’t interest me” or “I want to know.” Through these phrases, the speaker is setting out the aspects of a prospective lover she cares the most about. Oriah means “light of God” in Hebrew, and it is said that it is an Ancient Jewish custom to start the healing process with the change of a name. The elderly woman she encountered in her dream was like a shamanic teacher, imparting wisdom, claiming that the name change was all part of the process of bringing up healing energies. Her last name originated from the name of medicine given to her by one of her teachers. It means “one who likes to find and push the edge.”In creative work we seek to add our consciousness to what the world offers to us in ways that create new stories, images, and sounds that reveal insights, patterns and truths we may not have seen before. But to do this we have to be able to get our conditioned responses- the belief, for instance, that water should necessarily be depicted in paintings as blue- out of the way so we can see the fullness of the world within and around us. This is harder to do than we might think... More from Opening The Invitation Oriah is first and foremost a story-teller, a lover of words and symbols and the stories that lift our spirits, open our hearts and offer us ways to see patterns and create meaning in our lives. The focus of her life and work has been an on-going inquiry into the Sacred Mystery. Her writing, teaching and personal journey all explore how we can each become the individual we are at the deepest level of being and how we can co-create meaning together in the world. Blending humor, insight and compassion for our human struggles Oriah encourages herself and others to be ruthlessly honest and infinitely kind toward our own strengths and our weaknesses.

Oriah showed a willingness to absorb information and was exposed to the earth-based teachings of the First People, and she would go on to share what she learned. She then became a student of Philosophy. Her daily practice of yoga, ceremonial prayer, and meditation have also impacted her writings and her own personal journey. It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive. It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, ‘Yes.’The fourth stanza makes a clear statement about how she would like her lover to deal with life, specifically pain. She states that she needs to know if the listener has the strength to “sit with pain” and not move to “fade it” or “fix it.” This could be her pain or their own. It should not be something debilitating. Pain should provide a strength rather than a weakness. The book starts off with a prelude of questions followed by a poem called “The Dance.” That, then, becomes the basis of her book. Each chapter begins with a section of the poem and then is expanded and explored by Ms. Mountain Dreamer’s (a name given her at the end of a ceremony in which she participated) own story along with other examples of those she has known. The end of each chapter is a meditation or time of reflective questions on how the chapter relates to your life and what you might want to unravel about that topic. Some of the chapters explore slowing down, relationships, sorrow and anger and others—all the while reinforcing that we are loving enough/compassionate enough in whatever stage we find ourselves, no matter what life tosses our way. She also stresses why slowing down to do the dance of life for those of us who find ourselves over-booked, over-work without time for the important things. I want to know if you can see beauty, even when it’s not pretty, every day, and if you can source your own life from its presence. The speaker again asks the listener if they would be able to live with disappointment and loss, as well as failure. This is not necessarily their own, it could be hers as well. She wants a lover who can take it all in stride and remain strong in the face of defeat. They should be able to take power from an upset and “shout” out that they have not given up. Their soul is still strong.

The final book in Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s bestselling trilogy opens us to finding and consciously living the meaning and purpose—the unique calling—at the center of our lives I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!” The poem begins with the speaker making two initial statements about what she does and does not want to know about a possible lover. First, she does not care what they do for a living. She does care about their dreams and what their heart aches for secretly. The speaker goes on to add that she wants her life and that of her lover to be filled with the great adventure of being alive.

The Invitation

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments. Mountain Dreamer attended a social work program and became a graduate of Ryerson University in Toronto. She also studied in the University of Toronto’s philosophy program. Mountain Dreamer now holds classes for various groups, as well as retreats focused on writing and the practices of First Nations people. In this capacity, she appeared on a number of television networks. These include Oprah, NPR, and PBS. She also contributed to a weekly blog on Green Bough. Oriah has a long and unusual history with her name. In 1984, at thirty years of age, after the onset of severe Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, she had a dream where several elderly women- those she calls Grandmothers in the dream- told her to change her given name to Oriah as part of the process of healing. Nervous about doing something others might see as strange, but desperate to be well, she took the name Oriah and has been called this (by everyone but her mother) since that time. Twenty years later, while doing a book tour, on three successive nights, in three different cities, she was told by people at the bookstores she was visiting that Oriah means light of God in Hebrew, and that it is an ancient Jewish custom to change a patient’s name when doing a healing, to invite new and healing energies.

This is a story about surrendering from a woman who has found surrender impossible. This is a story about stopping the war, my war, the one I have fought all my life, the one I have not been able to give up despite the fact that I have lost every battle and sin cerely declared myself out of action over and over again. It's a story about stopping the war with what is within and around me because I have simply had enough of fighting... More "The Call" It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithlessand therefore trustworthy. gap between how we want to live and how we're actually living. Available from Sounds True on both cd and cassette. Excerpts from the books: From Chapter Four "Learning To See" in What We Ache For : It is clear from the start that she is not looking for a simple relationship. She is seeking out something deeper and longer-lasting. It is also safe to assume that she would prefer the listener to know her in the same ways she is seeking to know them. To have an ultimate dream of desire, and to seek the journey to fulfill the dream, is the purpose of life! Have a personal dream, always treat people with love, but find a personal dream, whatever that might be, but find it! Gently communicate your wish to the universe, to the Creator, yet take steps to accomplish you wish! Then know, next it is the Creator's, Buddha, Mohammed, Christ, God, whatever your name is, turn to open doors which will allow you to accomplish what others will never dream. It's OK, it's 'your' dream, make it happen, live as if it has already happened... and it will happen!

The Name

Her bestselling books and teachings blend honesty, compassion, and humor to encourage sacred self-discovery. Having faced her own adversities, Oriah urges infinite kindness toward our own and others’ imperfections. Her insights help readers embrace their full humanity in all its rawness – fears, failures, passions, and purpose. Lessons from the Poem It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. In the third stanza, the speaker begins with her last “It doesn’t interest me” statement for now. At this time the point she is trying to make it less obvious. She refers to a moon that represents her lover’s life, whether that be emotionally or physically, and the “planets” that “square” it. These are the people, topics, or issues that revolve around the listener’s life. They are exterior and mean nothing. The seventh stanza of ‘The Invitation’is the shortest of the twelve at only five lines. The speaker turns to beauty in this section and asks if her listener can see it everywhere. Beauty should be clearly present even when it is not “pretty / every day.” She does not define what the un-pretty things are. This allows beauty to apply to the largest section of every day possible.