I have grown to love all that spaces offer. They provide a pause, so that friends can remain friends, while allowing one or the other to navigate a life change and look for sure footing on a path that the two have not known together.
A long silent prayer space in spiritual direction, gives sanction to a directee moving through the white space that lies between the words ending one chapter and those beginning the next. There in the quiet, past and future come together for a blessing.
Living in the spaces allots opportunity to blur harsh lines that once compartmentalized life into either/or, conveniently concealing our shame. Unraveling fear or ego, too big for more seasoned stages of life, requires periodic spaces.
Spaces can provide a prayerful cadence as we explore the highlights and shadows of our character until they become one. With practice, the gap in between can silence the mental chatter, so we can hear our dreams speak and become acquainted with our unconscious parts.
It sounds like Mermaid theology, and yet allowing Love’s Spirit to lead can feel as unsettling as following sea nymphs and sirens away from a pre-planned course. Consider the radical choices that so many coming home to Love have made. Did death on a cross make any logical sense at all? But Jesus answered, “Thy will, not mine” and of the very ones crucifying Him, He said, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do”.
Being temporarily thrown off balance may be exactly what we need to willingly extend grace and forgiveness to one another. By tilting the flat spiral, pulling it into a third dimension and then trusting the spaces therein, we begin to experience all that is extraordinary in the midst of what we have otherwise known as ordinary or someone else’s fault.
Spaces can protect our need for solitude as courage builds or heated emotions subside. Apart from the competing voices that vie for our attention and distract us from the deeper call to wholeness, spaces remind us who we are in our most enlightened moments. Yes, I have grown to love all that spaces offer.