Below is my column from Vermont Views for anyone who has not gone there.
http://www.vermontviews.org/vermontviews.org/in_between.html
Between: I begin this column with the concept of between-ness There are many forms of in-between — the dusk between night and day, that time when we have completed something or left something behind, and have not yet begun the next stage in our lives . . . all these things take us to a place where we are untested, perhaps uncomfortable, and in a place of unknowing. Can we embrace this time of uncertainty and simply feel it and relax with the pause that life has given us? Thresholds to new stages of our lives can be unnerving, as we have no idea what to expect. A new job, marriage, divorce, the loss of someone we love, graduation, all bring change that is often tingling with that very knowledge that we truly do not know what will happen next. The stability of our lives has suddenly shifted, and we are left for a while in the midst of a downpour that we cannot yet see beyond. In such times, it is often helpful to have someone in our lives to talk with, who can see things from a different perspective or see what we cannot yet see. Or perhaps rarely, we can dialogue with ourselves.
I have recently had the chance to experience this world of “between” deeply through loss, and while I wish that I were not in this place, I cannot help feeling the immensity of these moments. Tonight as I walked in my backyard, I saw the light on through the window of my Press and saw inside, almost as a vision in my minds eye, the past that existed before everything in my life changed: a life that had stability and purpose, joy and simplicity. The place remains the same, the light that shines outside that same window is no different, but what I briefly saw, is the past. Am I somehow suspended between two worlds, the past and the future? The world speeds by while I hold the transitory in my hand, looking at it, trying to understand where it has gone.
When we lose someone we love deeply, the world changes and we experience everything in a kind of altered motion from the rest of the world. We are in this world but not of it. Things that once seemed important to us no longer are. A kind of silence surrounds us as we stand with one foot in this world and another in the invisible world of the soul. The physical world and the spiritual world coincide in ways they had not before, and the depths of the universe opens into us like a funnel, pouring the stars through our heart.
Part of what happens in these moments is the awareness that there are no absolute answers. In these moments of being between certainties, when we are neither in the future nor the past, what time and the motion of the universe takes away from us becomes the pathway through the darkness (or the light), to a new beginning, one that we face with either a trust and anticipation of the rich possibilities ahead or a path we fear because it is so unknown. Is it possible to not pursue that constant need to assure ourselves that we must have all the answers before we act? Relinquishing our need to define the future with absolute certainty allows ourselves the kindness to live in the moment for the time being.
Where are we when we are not yet where we want to be … yet not where we once were? Our yearning, both forward and back, is an ongoing search as we look in at the window of our lives, seen from afar. Its light stops us for a moment. We can see what used to be, and sometimes we can see through the fog to the wishful hopes for our future. In the ever-changing landscape of our lives, the heartbeat of each second is an unknown; we can only suspend our need to know the outcome, and try to move forward step by step; in a way to trust that those unanswered questions need not be solved immediately, and instead became the air under our feet that propels us on.
