Here, illuminated by dancing candlelight and flickering twinkle lights, I free my heart-cradled visions onto a listening journal page.
Here, I relinquish resistance to an early, pre-dawn rise and trust the bountiful, fresh energy flowing through my intelligent body. She’s ready to wake, ready to consciously dream under that lone bright star that I keep glimpsing in between my window shades.
Here, there’s sourdough toast served on fine china, hot coffee in a teacup, and a vase of white roses.
Here, my only work is in liberating myself into PLAY. To diligently and kindly reassure my strategizing mind that she can take a break.
The work is in granting my dreams full, uninterrupted space to roam wildly and to adventure with abandon. The work is in letting my dreams feel safe enough to emerge, and then, like a loving mother, to step back and watch these creative beings skip joyously and play riotously.
So at 4am, with starlight and wavering candle-flames, I open-heartedly muse in the between space and savor my hot coffee while my creative hopes for 2023 reign grandly.
I leave the strategizing, the intellectualizing, the HOW to the creative powers of the Universe.
My work is in naming the shy desires of my heart, in kindly whispering to them, “You are welcome here.”
My only resolution is to untangle self-criticism.
So when my body wakes at 4am I don’t resist – I trust her wisdom and I rise. So when my heart begins to speak about fantastical things I pull up a seat (and a plate of buttered toast) and listen to her poetic soliloquy. So when I tip into fear I reorient to the counsel of present time … and this time at present is the between space.
The days after Christmas and right before the New Year are a sacred container holding potent space to reflect on what-was and to dream into possibility of what-will-be.
This is the between space … the time for conscious dreaming, for ritualized slowness, for cultivating the domestic arts … of comfort, coziness, celebratory tidiness that creates ease within the body.
Our souls are nestling within the beauty of nourished, embodied vitality, and also, we are soul-called to explore the dream realms, to lean backward and forward in time while staying so gorgeously rooted to the stillness of this now-winter moment.
This is the between space … mirrored in the half-full moon waxing against this late December night sky. We are in the state of visible transition. Half-full with intentional reflection and half-empty to make purposeful room for what is aligned for us to root and bloom.
This is the between space … which is what I heard when the kindhearted neighbor told me on a cold, twinkle-lit winter solstice night walk, “Honey, something is stirring. You can feel it.”
Yes, something is stirring … our awareness is the fertile earth for this stirring seed to cocoon and grow.
Yes, something is stirring … right here at dawn, the darkness dissolving into light.
Yes, something is stirring … perhaps you’ve been waking up early too … restless with excitement to entertain imaginings that ignite illuminations for 2023 and deepen a heart-brighter glow for what is right here and right now … stars, candleflames, wool socks, a human being awake to the inner and outer world, liberated into the listening lushness of the now and open to listening to what is soul-nudged into the next.
Be in the between space.
Rooted and winged.