THE "IN BETWEEN TIME" BETWEEN CHRISTMAS AND EPIPHANY

Spiritual thinkers and writers often reflect that growth occurs "in limine', that is when one is living, thinking, journeying between spaces. For me, the time between Christmas and Epiphany offers space and time to reflect on the past year, to ponder lessons learned, to plan, consider actions/resolutions for the New Year. 

2021 was quite an eventful year for me. 

I accomplished more travelling around the U.S.A. than in any time in my 73 years. From Lake Superior to the Gulf of Mexico, from Acadia National Park in Maine to Redwood National Park in California, from St. Louis to Boulder, from Mississippi backroads to Vermont state parks..... 

One reflection is that nothing replaces "being there", wherever "there" is. The cool breeze of the Atlantic coast, the bright colors of the Green Mountains in October, walking the Edmund Pettis Bridge in person, staring up at a 2000 year old Redwood tree ....... well, words just can't do this justice. 

Another reflection is that I am "different" because of this rambling around. My perspective about peoples' hopes and dreams and our collective future now is informed by meeting people in their space. 

.... the corporate couple who left the rat race to operate a campground on the shore of Lake Champlain in Vermont 

.... the carryover from the 1960's dude who gave me a Pro V1 he found and greeted me while strolling around the Middlebury College golf course 

 .....hikers of all nationalities, shapes, ages , and sizes in the Rockies and the Alleghenies

 ..... The New Hampshire grandson of friends Kathy and Doug who spent an afternoon hiking a mountain trail with four retirees, seemingly loving every minute and conversing with bright and spirited eloquence. 

A third reflection is being thankful....for the time, the health, the resources to be in and around this world in 2021. 

 A fourth reflection is being reminded how quickly things can change, how fleeting this time we have really is, how critical it is to grab the moment and live in it fully. The deaths of good old friends, the onset of dementia in another buddy, the mass shooting at a supermarket where my grandd
aughters shop--- all reminded me how "temporal' this life really is. 

Pondering all this during the "in between time" challenges me to ask.... so what? 

 What shall I do? 

 What have I learned, really? 

  If I am different, how am I different? 

 Maybe, like the old Ani DiFranco song there are no answers to these questions. Maybe the "in between time" is just that.... a time to be "in between". And maybe 2022 can also be "quite an eventful year".