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Welcome back to the Living Compass, Spirituality and Oneness podcast. My name is Scott Stoner. I'm the creator of this podcast and on this initiative and it comes out of my background of 40 years experience as a ordained clergy person and a marriage and family therapist. I'm going to focus on another quote this week. The quote is Honor the space between no longer and not yet honor the space between no longer and not yet. To quote by author by the name of Nancy Levin,
I just returned from a long weekend in Virginia. I had the honor to go out and lead a retreat for an Episcopal church that's actually based in Vienna, Virginia, a suburb of D.C. Holy Comforter Episcopal Church. And they do an annual church retreat up in the mountains of Virginia, almost up to the western almost up to West Virginia, right in the border of Virginia and West Virginia, a beautiful retreat center called Shrine Month. And I introduced them to contemplative walking, walking meditation program that we're piloting with Living Compass called Retreat on Two Feet. And you can learn more about that at our website. Under program, the resources, and I'll be talking more about that.
But one of the walks that we go on is we put these quote cards out and people can choose a quote card that they feel really speaks to them, kind of has their name on it. Then they go for a kind of a walking meditation with their card and they come back and talk about it. And many people chose this card honor the space between no longer inside yet. Why? Why is that? Because so many times you find yourself in that space. I find myself in that space where in that space that we call liminal space, that space between we're with something that we has been known and familiar to us no longer is. And we don't know yet what the new normal is going to be. It could be due to a change that is planned in our lives or a chance to change that's developmental or planned in someone else's life, like graduating from from high school and moving on into one's young adult life and maybe leaving home for the first time or taking a new job or move or moving into a new relationship or retiring.
But obviously we can get thrown into that liminal space between no longer. And yet just by life happens to us. That can be a health scare. It can be the loss of a loved one, a loss of relationship, a loss of a job, a change that that we had not planned. And the key that when people came back and they chose this card and talked about it was that the key to them was being comfortable with the vulnerability. That's what they thought it meant For them to honor this space was to be comfortable, to learn, to become comfortable with one with the vulnerability and then and related to that, to not try to rush through it, not try to do an end run around it. I know I have often tried to do that in my own life. When I'm in a vulnerable place, I just push harder, you know? But I do that when I have an injury from running or something and Oh, okay, I got an injury. Well, I just push harder right in that.
And instead of honoring the the time that I'm injured and giving myself the time that I need to recover, the other thing that people talked about me, because this was a congregation that obviously is very supportive of one another, another thing that people talked about, they chose this card was the importance of community, the importance of not going through this in-between time of the space between no longer and yet alone. That's another mistake we can make, is to try to be the Lone Ranger and try to be the rugged individual. I'm going to tough it out and and kind of pull into myself and do this.
And the importance of community cannot be over valued. We have a lot of saying that when you replace I in the word illness with we you get wellness it's just our hokey, if you will, a way of emphasizing not that the saying may be hokey, but there's nothing hokey or or silly about the power of community, especially community, where we can be real with one another, where we can be vulnerable one another. That's the community we're creating with Living Canvas. We've been creating it and we're so glad that you're a part of our community. You can like our Facebook page, you can be in touch with me through a living cover story by email is just Scott@Living Compass.org, but find our Facebook page. We post this episode there and and if you're between a a space in that space between new and longer and not yet and maybe you can share how you're honoring it because just as on this retreat when we share those stories with one another, we are inspired.
We are enriched where we are a little less alone. We normalize that. Change is hard, whether it's planned or unplanned, but when we can go through it together, so that's when our spirituality becomes really important. It becomes that compass that that guides our path, as I talked about last week and guides us through that liminal time. So, so good to be with you again. And as we continue to be on this lifelong journey of wholeness and wellness, including those times when we're between no longer and not yet until we gather again here next time on living covers podcast, may you be safe, may you be happy, me be healthy. And if you are in that space between no longer and yet may you find ways to honor it and to embrace the vulnerability. Take the patients you need and find the community that you need to walk through it with the support of others.