That quote from the great Bohemian poet Rilke is just the right inspiration for transitioners who are eager to start fresh in a new year.
It arrived in my In-Box today in an email from my colleague Anne Perschel of Germane Consulting. Anne's message is to pause and notice the space in-between, such as the space we are in right now as 2013 comes to an end and we await the start of 2014.
Artist and poet Jan Richardson calls such in-between spaces "thin places" where earth and heaven come closest together in our lives. In such places, the Irish believe that there is a thin membrane, a whisper of a veil.
In a New York Times article, travel writer Eric Weiner talked about thin places: "Thin places...are locales where the distance between heaven and earth collapses and we’re able to catch glimpses of the divine, or the transcendent or, as I like to think of it, the Infinite Whatever."
In a thin place, whether an open space like the Grand Canyon or an inside space like an ashram or a church, you may feel something inexpressible in words. But when you feel it, you know it is real.
You sense that it is opening you up, changing you somehow for the better. Maybe it is what this Apache proverb is saying: “Wisdom sits in places.”
So my suggestion for this in-between time comes from Anne's blog. She says, "I think we should pay more respect and attention to the space in between: What I say and what you say. How I feel and how you feel. The changing of the light. The hunger and the feeding."
This intentional noticing of the in-between spaces seems an appropriate spiritual discipline for anyone in transition. After all, when you are in transition, you are traveling in between.
Posted by Terrence Seamon on Monday December 30, 2013
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