[Camino Poem No. 13] For the Interim Time

This is the 13th of 42 posts about the poems that carried me along the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route in Aug-Sep 2016. 

On this day (no. 13), I shared dinner with a Norweigen pastor and his fiancee. Here are some things he said which I liked:

"please God, give me patience. NOW!"

"there is a difference between meditation and prayer. In prayer, you invite a relationship with something that is bigger than you."
By this point, I had walked for twelve consecutive days, often through uncomfortable heat, and with aching limbs. I was beginning to ask, with ever greater force: why? Why keep walking? What was it that I was walking to Santiago for? Why walk this camino a second time?

This poem says it better than I could.

(it was chosen by a primary school teacher from the UK)


For the Interim Time - John O'Donohue

When near the end of day, life has drained

Out of light, and it is too soon

For the mind of night to have darkened things,

No place looks like itself, loss of outline

Makes everything look strangely in-between,

Unsure of what has been, or what might come.

In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.

In a while it will be night, but nothing

Here seems to believe the relief of darkness.

You are in this time of the interim

Where everything seems withheld.

The path you took to get here has washed out;

The way forward is still concealed from you.

"The old is not old enough to have died away;

The new is still too young to be born."

You cannot lay claim to anything;

In this place of dusk,

Your eyes are blurred;

And there is no mirror.

Everyone else has lost sight of your heart

And you can see nowhere to put your trust;

You know you have to make your own way through.

As far as you can, hold your confidence.

Do not allow confusion to squander

This call which is loosening

Your roots in false ground,

That you might come free

From all you have outgrown.

What is being transfigured here is your mind,

And it is difficult and slow to become new.

The more faithfully you can endure here,

The more refined your heart will become

For your arrival in the new dawn.

(on this day, I walked 20km from Granon to Tosantos)