© 2006
Julie Jordan Scott
"If you don't risk anything, you risk even more."
Erica Jong
It sounds odd and yet the truth shines through
the words like a flashlight in a darkened forest.
Patricia Schneider, respected teacher and writer
said, “Trust the disconnections and the gaps.”
What? When I find a gap, I am not supposed
to immediately build a bridge across it?
This is new. And when I allow myself the
space to take a breath, I like it.
“Trust the gap” she suggests.
I was a little girl when my family and I would
go canoeing and picnicking along the Delaware
Water Gap. It was a beautiful expanse of the
river, different from other parts of my personal
favorite span of water. It held a certain still,
raw, ruggedness that called to me then – and
now, looking at images of it, calls to me still.
The water gap is a place where land collided,
mountains grew and the flow from a variety of creeks
was caught in the rocks and began the
erosion process – all relatively simultaneously.
Today the river continues to create the Water Gap – and
the mountains continue to grow and the water continues to
be “caught” in a space of stillness and beauty.
“Trust the gap.”
It means to trust the collision, trust the growth,
trust the aftermath of the collision and growth – trust
the stillness. Be with the stillness. Breathe
with the stillness. Don’t make it something
“wrong” you need to build a bridge across.
I know there have been times when I have
come to a place, a gap place, and simply sat and
prayed. The best moments of prayer have been when
I have settled into the prayer itself and
allowed myself to cry fully and opened my
heart completely to the Divine.
Julia Cameron wrote, “When an artist sends
up a despairing prayer, the Great Creator
does hear and answer it.”
It is when our prayers are sent up half-heartedly – and
we begin to build that monolithic-ode-to-our-own-
solution-making-bridge-over-the-
gap-and-fill-the-stillness-with-our-own-noise
and leave the Divine out of the equation that
we lose the ability to even begin to
fathom faith at all.
Instead, “Trust the gap.”
Remember to trust the collision, trust the
growth, trust the aftermath of the collision
and growth – trust the stillness. Be with the
stillness. Breathe with the stillness. Don’t
make it something “wrong” you need to
build a bridge across.
I know in my own life, there are collisions
that I haven’t grown to trust yet… the aftermath
is something I still feel discombobulated
about or I get tangled up in the
building-my-own-solution-bridge rather than
sit and watch the gap, the growth, and the natural
erosion spring into form with divine perfection.
It is a part of becoming whole – of
integration – that I am learning to relax
into more completely every day.
It is like coming home to myself.
It is definitely another aspect of The Dream.
It is most assuredly another aspect of
The Universal Dream.
Part of being with the stillness of the Gap is
being in that paradoxical space of still-movement.
Being in the stillness of the Gap is growing and
eroding and blossoming – so much that it is
outside of what can be perceived through
the human senses.
I quote Julia Cameron again, saying, “Call
yourself home to the part of you that is
strong enough to continue. That is when
the help comes – it bubbles up within us
and enters as lightly as wind stirring a curtain.”
The gentle wind of your dream is stirring
your heart. Trust the gentle power there. Trust
the gentle sweetness of sitting,waiting,
listening – and adding the wisdom from the nudges,
inklings and knowing in my heart. Today,
choose to act in alignment with this knowing.
Today, choose your dreams.
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