Lately, everything has been very loud. You would think with everyone at a distance, isolating, all that space would remain empty. Instead, it’s bloated with an endless stream of questions and anxieties. They fill up our homes, wall-to-wall like smoke. They’re transmitted through our screens. They’re caged in our bodies and minds.   

Daily, I try to listen. To hear what is true. To tune the radio within and find a frequency of wisdom. It’s elusive but, when encountered, shockingly clear. A little over a week ago, I had one of my first moments of spiritual quiet and journaled: 

I find myself here. Cracked open inside. Being invited into a deep reckoning. There is an offering laid out before me. A buffet of questions and possibilities. The last two weeks have been massive. Like a black hole whose power pulls you into an infinite darkness. In this moment, at the edge of the abyss, I find myself called to courage (the wisdom of my heart), clarity (the wisdom of my intuition) and creation (the wisdom of God). A Change Trinity: Courage, Clarity and Creation. The three dance with each other, trying to find their rhythm within me. 

On my wall, there’s a white board with the word “DREAM” written in bold blue lettering. I’ve been thinking about my “word for the year” in light of this global pandemic. I say it out loud and it feels like a puzzle in my mouth. I’m slowly understanding that “dream” is not just a state of mind, but a state of being. It is a two-way prayer. Now is the time to free the prophecies and visions that live at the bottom of my throat and twitch through my fingertips. Something about this moment of world-wide chaos silences the voices of doubt that make me question the importance of sharing my words. My light. It simultaneously unveils the “old ways” — domination, denial and manipulation — will no longer work. That they never worked. The illusions of comfort, control and infrastructure are falling away and we, together, bringing all of our gifts, can dream ourselves into a new reality.

An activist I follow recently explained the idea of re-indigenizing which encompasses this perfectly. We’re not going backward, but inside. Way deep down to that place we call holy spirit, third eye, intuition — to remember the Truth we have forgotten. To start re-membering ourselves, our relationships, our communities, our species. Healing together. Perhaps the black hole is not an abyss, but a threshold. And we are not adrift in infinity, but learning to see in the dark. To discover the worlds awaiting us there.

I’m reminded that this is a liminal space between the ‘what was’ and the ‘next’ where transformation can take place. Poet David Whyte describes this as “the sheer beauty of the world inhabited as an edge between what we previously thought was us and what we thought was other than us . . . the claiming of our place in the living conversation.” To say, “I am here and you are here and together we make a world.”

Kahlil Gibran speaks to this well in his writing on joy and sorrow, positing, “verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.” Why do we refuse this middle-space of uncertainty? Why do we refuse to hold tension, especially when we know God is change? It is up to us to clear a space in our life for something new to claim us. For God to claim us.  

As the days progress and we drift deeper into the overwhelming unknown, I am accepting the offering of self-exploration. I am consenting to uncertainty and change — to God. I am channelling Courage, Clarity and Creation by living out “dream” even here, even now. I am humbled by this liminal space and trusting the joy and sorrow that help me navigate it.

To end this letter, I’m borrowing my friend’s short meditation and sharing it with you: “Without love, nothing else matters. With love, nothing else matters.”