The Christmas Space Between

Well the food has been consumed…………. Well to be honest a shit ton of food has been consumed and the we ( most of us) are in a slump. This slump could be emotional, physical or even spiritual, but what is really going on? I have found myself jumping between the excitement of what the new year could bring and yet the feeling of inbetweenness a type of liminal space or stuckness which both surprised and perplexed me. One of my many hats is as a Nurse within ICU. This time of year inevitably reveals this slump in tangible terms….. the suicide attempts who come to us to recover…. or not. I Think we all feel a level of sadness a hesitance to ask to many questions or ask why. We are better off not knowing. It might reveal something within us, Maybe something we have rejected within ourselves. As long as it stays over there, away from me. As long as we project on to the other. David Whyte in his writing about the Holiness in the holidays states:

“Holiness, in the midst of all our gift giving, might be the central absence that holds all peripheries; the pure internal emptiness that makes sense, not only of everything that has been given to us, but everything and everyone we feel has ever been taken from us.” *Whyte

Whyte is highlighting the sacred in the profane. What I and my overdosing patients all know there is a void……. as space within us. Maybe just maybe we slow down enough this time of year to experience this void. For a lot of people it is only a place of pain. For me it is just a place of knowing…….. A place of settling…… Noticing my anxieties is a gift, a place to know and be known. The uncomfortable becomes tolerable. this only comes with 5 decades of being on this planet. What do you notice? Where do you feel uncomfortable or what is your ‘central absence’ which holds all the peripheries? The invitation to to attend to care for and to even love this desolate place.

*Finding the Holy in the Holidays

© David Whyte

Mid-Winter Thoughts © 2021