13th December
Thinking today about a story I heard, of overcoming adversity. A story that started off sounding like it would be about journeying through, about a pilgrimage of uncertainty. But became instead, a story of Things Working Out. Of course it did. Because those are the stories we love, triumph against the odds, underdogs coming good. I love those stories too, sometimes.
But where are the stories of not knowing? The stories of pilgrimaging into an unknown that remains unknown? The stories of not arriving, and not being able to call that Not Yet.
When I wrote over Lent 2022 about Spaces In Between, I was thinking about this too. Unfinished stories. Holy Saturdays. How we need stories of being on the way - not even knowing where to - not just stories of arriving. How hope is so much sold as the place we are headed to, and the primacy of getting there.
Advent is also a space in between. A weeks-long Holy Saturday. And though there is a destination that we get to, in eleven days time, Christmas too is a space in between. The birth of a baby embodying the in-between of human and divine. The With, in God-with-us. The manger in between animals, the place to sleep in between danger and journeys. The small new life in between ancient promise and the Easter bit.
The In Between bears hope.
The tension of being held between things, stretched between things, living stretched, living held. The navigating, though the places of coming or going aren’t clear. The Not Here and Not There. Pilgrimaging, not knowing where too, and no where to go back to.
Perhaps hope is the in between.
Not the thing that gets us through or the thing that we are learning or the place we are headed towards. But simply the stretched and stretched and stretched feeling, or the ground and feet meeting, or the air in between ribs and lungs and lips. Not something distinct or distant, but the space itself. The space that is pilgrimage, air, us.
[Image description: A grey electricity box (I think!) in Leeds, with the words “it’ll be reet one day”, and “mental health matters”, graffitied onto it. Broken pavement, red brick, and turquoise graffiti in the background.]