They knew she was ready when she put her stick down. Then she shouted, "Let the children come!" andthey ran from the trees toward her.
"Let your mothers hear you laugh," she told them, and the woods rang. The adults looked on andcould not help smiling.
Then "Let the grown men come," she shouted. They stepped out one by one from among theringing trees.
"Let your wives and your children see you dance," she told them, and groundlife shuddered undertheir feet.
Finally she called the women to her. "Cry," she told them. "For the living and the dead. Just cry."And without covering their eyes the women let loose.
It started that way: laughing children, dancing men, crying women and then it got mixed up. Women stopped crying and danced; men sat down and cried; children danced, women laughed,children cried until, exhausted and riven, all and each lay about the Clearing damp and gasping forbreath. In the silence that followed, Baby Suggs, holy, offered up to them her great big heart.
She did not tell them to clean up their lives or to go and sin no more. She did not tell them theywere the blessed of the earth, its inheriting meek or its glorybound pure.
She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if theycould not see it, they would not have it.
"Here," she said, "in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on barefeet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don'tlove your eyes; they'd just as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it.