I no longer own a car -- though the necessities I've been dragging around with me through the last three moves fit in the back seat and trunk of one. I have been making an effort to simplify. I no longer have a job, neither one that pays nor one that is volunteer -- which also adds to a sense of not being anchored. My checking account had a balance of $5.40 in it yesterday morning. And as I move through this discernment process, I hear Claire Graham's admonitions to me from last week: "Don't be moved by the fear. Fear is the devil." Or, as Frank Herbert wrote in Dune, "Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings obliteration." I am trying to be mindful of that as I move around once again in liminal space, or as the Asian theologian, Peter Phan, put it, in the betwixt-and-between. Being neither here nor there, and trying to dodge the fear, takes a bit of effort and focus (breathe, Debbie, keep breathing deep deep breaths) to be simply in the present. Being in the present and aware -- there's a name for it in martial arts, zanshin. I am trying to maintain my zanshin as I move through the liminality of my interior space.
Putting aside the fear to consider the present is a balancing act. It is like walking on the edge of a sword or on a tightrope. Keep eyes focused on the goal. Don't look down. Breathe calmly. Keep putting one foot in front of the other, feeling for the contours of the void as you go. Don't ignore the dangers, but also don't let them catch your mind. Keep inching along smoothly without becoming frozen in one spot. Maintain the zanshin . . . and in the moments between the breaths when all is still, just discern.
Discern is an interesting word. It is from the Latin word, discernere, which means "to separate, divide, distinguish, discern”. It seems like a circular definition in a way, that at the root of the word discern is the word discern. It is the equivalent of the Latin words "dis," which means not or not any, plus "cernere" which has several meanings. Taken from the Latin root cerno, the infinitive form, cernere, means to see, to decide, to examine, to sift, to separate, to distinguish, to resolve, and to determine. So, to discern means NOT to be decided or resolved. It is being neither here nor there, betwixt and between. It is a state of examining and sifting and distinguishing. And so in the moments of stillness, I am trying to distinguish where I should go and what I should be.
I have a picture that is a window into what I am trying to discern. It is a Soulcollage, a collage that I made before starting this journey with the Franciscans -- a picture of what I was seeking, pasted together magazine pictures tweaked in Photoshop to express one of my deepest desires. Its title is "Desert Sisters". In the tradition of Clare of Assisi, I have been gazing upon it as meditation. Since it predates the Franciscan journey, Desert Sisters is a source "to go back to." It is a picture of my liminality.
Desert Sisters
