For the Interim Time

A blessing

Friends,

I remain buried. There’s a lot going on in my life at the moment, in every sphere: creative, personal, geographical, work. Some of it I can talk about; some of it I can’t, yet. In so many ways, I’m still in a strange state of becoming. Maybe we all are, always. Maybe that’s what going home is: accepting the constant becoming. Just in case any of you are also in some seemingly endless birth canal or other, I wanted to share this John O’Donohue poem sent to me by a kind, wise friend this week. It hit a spot for me.

By next week, I’ll be out from under the most pressing part of the current crush, and able to start unpacking and unpicking some of this interim time more fully.

Until then, sending love,

xx Ellie

For the Interim Time

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.

—John O’Donohue