Change and the interim time

change-and-the-interim-time

We are always in a state of change. Of transition. That’s life.

The world we inhabit, the ticking clock of our lives, as well as the passing seasons.

However, this time more than most has that quality of transition.

Here’s the thing about change – we don’t know with certainty what it’s going to be like. Whilst we anticipate, dream and speculate, we are not there.

We are here.

And here can feel messy and confusing.

So I was hoping to find a blessing for being in a time of change from John O’Donohue. But there wasn’t one.

Instead, he offered a profound and insightful blessing for the interim time.

For the interim time

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 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 had outgrown.

What is being transfigured here is your mind
And that 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, Benedictus – a Book of Blessings, Bantam Press, 2007

I hope that this affirms your ‘now‘ as it has affirmed mine.

Thanks for reading

Sue

This week

… Feels a long time, with many tracks walked along the way, including a new, yet familiar, path of creative leadership…