Sitting In the Mist Between What Was and What Is to Come

In the Western/American culture in which I live, we are impatient. We do not like being in the space between what was and what is to come. Sitting in the Irish mist, I call it, because it reminds me of time spent in the patience of Ireland when I could not see around the next curve in the road or in my life.

We don’t like those time after something has ended and before the next begins. We want it now and we want to know the whole picture, not just the beginning. But life is full of those spaces between here and there, between what was and what is to come. Seldom are we shown the second step until we actually take a first one, which we are only shown after patiently spending time in quiet of the mist. We must have patience with everything unresolved in our lives and try to enjoy—even love—the questions we must ask ourselves.

Rainer Maria Rilke in Letters to a Young Poet speaks elegantly of spending time in the mist, those moments of needed reflection that help us let go of that which was and grow into that which is to come.

I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Where I live in a rural woods, patience comes easier for me than it used to when I lived in the city. Perhaps it’s age as well that allows me to sit quietly and watch the morning mist rise from the farm fields on the other side of the trees, green and golden and browning from autumn’s approach. Perhaps even, it’s a bit of wisdom that allows me to reflect on that which was, to heal and clear its wound or un-attach from its joy, so when the time is right, I can move into the next phase of my life, allowing the next creation to unfold in divine time instead of my timetable.

If we are able to allow our lives to unfold naturally rather than push, that which comes is ready for us, as we are ready for it. What comes then is right for it is created by our dreams and built by our patience.