Quiet Spaces are interior as well as exterior. As much as my quiet spaces provide a retreat from the routine and the chaos of the world, photographs and memories sometimes cause me reflect on or recall that quietness, to center on it within myself. Too, writing helps in that focus.
Word center me, draw me inward, block out distractions, sights and sounds…reduce existence for that brief time span to bare essentials. That center point in which there exists only myself and light.
Sometimes, there are too many reasons why I cannot center there. Obligations and promises, jobs to finish and people to speak with and cherish—sometimes for too many days in a row, until I feel like I’m going to explode. That is why I formed the practice of setting aside the last two weeks of the year as a time when everything else can come to a halt. The family gatherings at Christmas are relaxed and relaxing, for the most part. This year, Christmas falls toward the beginning of my time off, followed by nine to ten days (I haven’t really decided, yet) when time can be poured out of its container, losing structure, and I can flow with the time.
Al has taken to scheduling vacation, also, for the week following Christmas Day. Because he too finds unstructured time refreshing, this works for the both of us. Solitude is not fractured by the other’s presence.
The weeks leading up to this vacation have been a little too busy to suit me, and there have been concerns to ponder. The very real possibility of laying the meeting down, the current unavailability of the on-line facilities for meeting for worship, and the anxiety—not of losing community, but of realizing again that community has not existed there for some years, now. It will be interesting to discover what the alternatives might be.
And, come the week after New Year’s Day, I will have another manuscript to put together for someone, and there will be a résumé to write, and there will be so many fewer things nagging at me, the days will be light, easy to carry. For a while, anyway.
