The Space in Between

Lotus by Ruth Bidgood
Bryn, the round hill,
dips to a valley that accepts
others:  a place of joining.
No wind carries up
Conversation of rivers.
Old sheepwalks, hardly grazed,
Stretch to the verge of forest.
On this grey day
no smoke rises:
from the one gaunt house.
 
Surely the silent utterance
of this place is ‘Emptiness’,
its time ‘Never’?
Yet it is said
That not leaves, not petals,
but the space at the center
of the heart’s lotus
contains everything.

                                    Here
rivers out of sigh
have their rhythms,
like blood through the heart.
Stillness throbs with the flow
of unperceived lives.
 
This is a place of joining,
whose silent utterance is ‘Abundance’,
whose time is ‘Ever.’


A week from today I'll be in Wales.  I can't tell you exactly what I'll be doing,  but if it keeps raining there like it has been, chances are it will involve curling up with a cup of tea and a good book in this room:

or getting lost in my writing at a desk somewhere in this room:

 

Ostensibly, I'm going over to do some pre-scouting of some of the sites we'll be visiting in May on the pilgrimage I'm leading for Washington National Cathedral.  The recent floods in Britain might mean a little less hiking to neolithic stone circles and wandering around abbey ruins and a little more time spent sitting quietly inside ancient churches and old cathedrals. 

 

Earlier this week I was stressing  about not begin able to get everything on my "to do" list done during this trip.  Then I realized that the idea of having a to do list is itself counter-intuitive to pilgrimage.  Checking off sites is a trip for tourists.  For pilgrims, the journey is about creating space-- being in the landscape, settling into sacred places, opening up to the space, both literally and metaphorically. 

 

So that's what I will be doing next week.  And somehow it seems like a perfect way to enter into the first week of Advent, traversing a dark winter landscape,  looking for glimmers of light, listening, waiting.