Good morning…
She sat with me peacefully honest, straddling the first half of life and the second, shedding her false self to free her true, mothering a teenage son, no longer a boy, not quite at man. When she pulled out her phone and slowly read aloud to me this poem, my heart resonated with each word. What does your heart feel as you sit in peaceful honesty, slowly whispering this poem to your truest self?
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“For the Interim Time” by John O’Donohue from To Bless the Space Between Us
When near the end of day, life has drained
Out of light, and it is too soon
For the mind of night to have darkened things,
No place looks like itself, loss of outline
Makes everything look strangely in-between,
Unsure of what has been, or what might come.
In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.
In a while it will be night, but nothing
Here seems to believe the relief of darkness.
You are in this time of the interim
Where everything seems withheld.
The path you took to get here has washed out;
The way forward is still concealed from you.
“The old is not old enough to have died away;
The new is still too young to be born.”
You cannot lay claim to anything;
In this place of dusk,
Your eyes are blurred;
And there is no mirror.
Everyone else has lost sight of your heart
And you can see nowhere to put your trust;
You know you have to make your own way through.
As far as you can, hold your confidence.
Do not allow confusion to squander
This call which is loosening
Your roots in false ground,
That you might come free
From all you have outgrown.
What is being transfigured here is your mind,
And it is difficult and slow to become new.
The more faithfully you can endure here,
The more refined your heart will become
For your arrival in the new dawn.
******
One word caught my attention as I read these words quietly, out loud. I did not know it’s meaning, so I googled the definition of the word “wan.”
This tiny word, a perfect word, puts skin on the entire poem. “Wan” describes a person’s ashen appearance or a waning amount of light, giving the impression of being emptied and exhausted. Dim and drained. Faint and feeble. Washed-out and wishy-washy. What used to be is gone and what will be has not yet formed. Our new dawn will arrive, just not in this deathlike moment. The more deeply we connect with God during the disorienting dusk of in-between, the more transfigured our mind and the more refined our heart.
I call to God; God will help me. At dusk, dawn, and noon I sigh deep sighs—he hears, he rescues. My life is well and whole, secure in the middle… (Psalm 55:16-17a, MSG).
…Sue…
