limbo....wet with tears?

Daring to trust and to let go of power....
To be holy and to be whole.
To find one's own unity inside of oneself,
to find unity so that we're not just in the head or just in the flesh,
not just in the heart;
that inner wholeness is a type of peace and wisdom.
And we need wisdom.
Jean Vanier, Encountering the "Other"

I seem to be caught between having too much to say and not finding the words to say it and I've come to the conclusion this morning that this may be because I'm in the middle of some kind of transformation. I had been looking at it as a merely a transition, but I think its more than that. I think its bigger than inching along because it seems to be more than a move physically. What is shifting inside me. It feels like a multi-sensory step forward.

The problem is.........? I don't know what I'm about to encounter beyond where I am. Changes mean decisions. Changes mean disruption, both good and bad, painful and joyful. So, I seem to be sitting in the swirl of the new summer wind incapable of stepping off a precipice I've been gazing at for quite some time now. I don't want to feel hurt. I'm afraid of feeling hurt. Maybe it won’t hurt. Maybe it will bring new wonderful awareness. Wounds in the making or a new salve for healing? It's a mystery. How do I learn to take the risk?

I wrote an email to a friend last night, confessing to how I was feeling. I used the word "limbo" because it was the closest descriptor I could conjure up. Limbo to me feels like sitting in a big round waiting room, dimly lit, with an unwelcoming aura. The colours are blandly muted. The furniture is uncomfortable. The air is stale as are my ruminative thoughts. The noise is non-descript muzak and its echoing my disturbed state of mind.

Limbo feels passive and irritating, like I'm waiting for my name to be called while sitting surrounded by the ghosts of others who have been waiting so long that they have passed on!

I rub my temples and I wait.

I pace the round room and I wait.

I sit on the floor, pull my knees up and I wait.

Sleep is disturbed

Thoughts are disturbed

Feelings are disturbed

Questions go unanswered

I cry out. Does anyone hear me?

I learn to shed my ego.

I learn to let go of the tension....

I tune out the freaking musak...and try to find the silence knowing that inside it are words of peace. To get there though, you have to wade through the stewing sound of limbo-ing distrust and confusion. Transformation feels suspended. But it's NOT is it? Is transformation ever halted? That's an ILLUSION, just like how i am interpreting my glazed observations of the round waiting room where all the doors are closed....just like I'm witnessing the faceless people around me as apparitions rather than flesh and blood of people who feel and think and experience the same as me.

And this is what I’m realizing………….

Transformation never takes a holiday even if you’ve been feeling aimless for a long time. Limbo is a necessary part of the journey. Aimlessness is too. Why? Well, I’m thinking that this is where we learn to integrate the head and the heart….the thinking and the feeling in order to prepare for change, in order to prepare for the moment when choices and decision have to be made. Transformation is never a destiny. Instead, it is a process of allowing for the fermentation needed to turn water into wine. It is the process of letting go of the illusion of power we intensely hold tightly to and learning how to honour our wounds as gifts.

Last night, while sitting in the limbo waiting room wallowing in my own stale air, I picked up a book and read the words Jean Vanier shared when he was invited to speak at a conference in Northern Ireland in June 2004. Encountering the “Other….” As I slipped into the wisdom of his reflections, I felt a lifting of my own spirits and a desire to sit in the place he refers to as the “sacred sanctuary.”

This is where we encounter “the Other…” This is where we can feel comfortable looking at our own vulnerabilities knowing God sits with us and loves us for who we are and for who we are becoming. This is where our vision alters in a way that we can see that in order to take another step along the transformative path, we can begin by accepting ourselves…warts and all. This is where we share our stories in order to learn from one another. And then I realized…. There is no better place to share our stories than sitting in the sacred sanctuary of the ultimate waiting room.

Hmmm....maybe limbo is really a sacred sanctuary where we dare to trust and to learn to let go of power. Gee, all of a sudden it's not so ugly a place after all. In fact, I'm beginning to recognize quite a few folks here. They're beautiful humans becoming just like me. Wanna join us?

ps. Pip? I see beautiful you. x thank you my friend.....