Thin Spaces
My friend Rebecca wrote this thought-provoking post on ‘thin spaces’, the Celtic concept of places (or moments) where the spirit world comes very near to our world. We can reach through and touch it; or it brushes us. She asked where we find our thin spaces. It might be a physical place, or it might be an experience. It might be something we can seek out, or it might be something that we can’t, that just comes upon us.
Here is my short list, the things that jumped immediately into my mind:
– being with someone during labour and birth
– sometimes while writing, when the words seem to come from beyond me
– when someone reads a poem out loud
– when my body is working very hard and my mind becomes very quiet
I was out with my siblings last night (and Kevin!), and I was thinking about how all five of us Snyder kids are both creative and impractical (thank heavens Kevin is practical). I don’t mean we’re disorganized or incapable of functioning in the world, but I do think we look at some practical things, such as work and earning a living, differently. Somehow, we must have been raised to value the making of things more than the buying of things. I think within that is some quiet value, never spoken of, of thin spaces. And our thin spaces maybe aren’t that profitable, but we were raised to choose unprofitable over practical if unprofitable feeds us in other ways.
I think many people choose the work they choose because it brings them closer to those thin spaces. What’s your work? Does it take you to unexpected moments or places of peace / calm / meditation / joy / insight / grace / giving / acceptance / fill-in-the-blank-with-your-word-for-a-thin-space?
Ideas
My girl takes after me. I like to write my ideas down. I have to write my ideas down, more precisely. It’s my version of “thinking out loud,” and I recommend it to my older children when they are having trouble with anything: mean siblings, unfair situations, anger management, you name it.
Yesterday, I took my own advice. The big kids are at overnight camp, and the little kids are at a dance camp during the mornings, just for this week; and I have no projects on the go. I’ve completed the triathlon, and the related Chatelaine.com blog. I am waiting for line edits on The Juliet Stories. I seem unwilling to commit to a new character and a new story, just yet. I am at the crux of something. Restless. Curious. So I spent the morning talking to myself in terrible printing (barely legible, even to me) inside the pages of a handy notebook.
Did anything come of it? But of course! If not exactly peace of mind, then peace of purpose.
My mother has a phrase she uses often: She likes to “stay open to the possibilities.” And while there’s plenty to recommend the idea, I’ve decided that rather than staying open to the possibilities, I prefer to pursue, invite, and seek out possibilities–and when the time is right, to choose and to commit, which is kind of the opposite of staying open to more and more and more. Commitment means closing off possibilities–at least, some of them. But it also means believing in the possibilities before you and available to you, and not forever hoping that something better may be waiting around the corner. It’s kind of like getting married. When I commit, I like to get it right. That comes with a certain amount (okay, a giant unreasonable amount) of agonizing and analyzing.
But I’m seeing that commitment can be lighter than that, too. I have before me a flexible year. Certain elements are inflexible: my youngest is still a preschooler for whom I am the primary caregiver. But depending on my income generation, there are childcare options to supplement my responsibilities. And I am at home. I can juggle. I’m not tied to the structured hours of a 9-5 job.
One thing became very clear during yesterday’s brainstorming: I am finding more satisfaction from expanding my working life–my public life, essentially. To connect, to be engaged with the world–it’s what I want.
Something clear to me at this exact moment, as my littlest leans his face onto my leg and says, “I’m bored!” is that I’m not a great mother when I’m typing on the computer or trying to think. The balance … is so imperfect.
Beauty
Children with sparklers, on the farm.
An excerpt from a letter to the editor, published in The Globe and Mail newspaper this past weekend, on the subject of government subsidies for the arts: “Canada subsidizes war. Canada subsidizes car companies. Canada subsidizes oil companies. Why shouldn’t Canada subsidize beauty?”
Best beach day
This is our favourite beach. It’s never too busy, but there are plenty of interesting people to watch. And lots of waves.
We settle in, spread out blankets and towels, and stay awhile. We take picnic food and eat in the sand. I read.
Some of us build.
Some of us cast ourselves upon the sand … face-first.
The water is really cold at this time of year. The sand is hot. Plus we were all up late last night burning things in the bonfire. So we’re tired. We can do whatever we want. We’re on holiday.
Bliss.
Camping
Camping with class: two rooms, bay windows, cereal buffet. (We buy cereal only in the summertime, as a treat, and it’s a good strategy for gaining an extra half hour of parental dozing).
Notice CJ’s eye? We like to make it a tradition to have at least one child with a mystery ailment on our Canada Day camping trip. This time it was CJ and a well-placed bug bite that made him look like a miniature boxer, post-bout. CJ also starred in a classic first-aid moment of panic while Kevin was in Tim Horton’s getting coffee (about an hour after this photo was taken). The kids and I were waiting in the car. CJ started yelling about something up his nose. “Did he say ‘rock’?” I asked (not at all calmly). Yup, a little fossil he’d found on the farm and decided to put up his nose (“Why?” the others wondered, but there are no answers to questions like these). In short order, the rock was removed. By lollipop stem. As grabbed from one of the car’s compartments (what? no first aid kit?). Quick thinking, Mama. AppleApple thought it might cheer CJ up to get to suck on said lollipop post-op. But we saved it for later. Because you never know.
This is the fifth summer of camping on Chach and B’s lawn, under the apple tree. Is it an apple tree? Lots of birds singing in the dawn.
Next on the day’s agenda: the beach. But first, a detour for some coffee. Lord have mercy.