Quotes

I can't sleep and i have already journaled.

So.

Here we are.

Rereading some journal entries, these thoughts have been helpful.

Madeleine L'Engle's thoughts on being safe in isolation or vulnerable in relationship and also, art:

It is easier to be safe then to be vulnerable. But [the woman] made the dangerous decision. She dared to love again....To be alive is to be vulnerable. To be born is to start the journey towards death....Art is an affirmation of life, a rebuttal of death...and here we blunder into paradox again, for during the creation of any form of art, art which affirms the value and the holiness of life, the artist must die...to listen to the work, she must get out of the way...for nothing is created without this terrible entering into death. It takes great faith, faith in the work, if not conscious faith in God, for dying is fearful. But without this death, nothing is born. And if we die willingly, no matter how frightened we may be, we will be found, and born anew into life, and life more abundant.

on thresholds and change:

Making "an attempt to reach into that tenuous territory of change that we must traverse when a threshold invites us."  ~John O'Donohue

Maybe part of the struggle in waiting in a threshold is that i am not particularly feeling invited. there is no movement or space forward to clearly move into. I am particularly aware of when i am invited or wanted or seen, and not particularly interested in getting myself into many places where i am unwanted. It's just too much work. and yet, the threshold is here. and yet i wait.

A Blessing for the Interim Time
By John O'Donohue

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 dark.

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 your 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.



what sticks:  Withheld. Concealed. 

Endure.