Space

We had an awful Sunday last weekend.  He reacted to the post I wrote about Making Space, and I, sensing attack (where there probably was none), went immediately into a snarling defense that left us both shaken and exhausted after an hours long standoff with one another.  In essence, His question was about what, exactly I meant by that phrase, and because I did not really know what I might mean by that, I could not tell Him in any sort of coherent and succinct fashion.  That frustrated Him, and His seeming inability / unwillingness to hear my metaphorical, allegorical musing made me feel as if I could not BE heard under any circumstances.  It was a mess.

Eventually, we wore ourselves out, found a quieter way to approach each other, and resolved to start again. We made it through the week in a sort of sad and tentative truce, and slowly, slowly relaxed toward the weekend.  Today, has been pretty good again, although we are both (I think) wary with each other.

I still don't entirely know what I mean exactly with regard to the notion of "making space."  I don't feel like it has to be a literal "moving apart" as He insists.  I feel like the idea of "space" is more complex and more subtle than the prosaic and expedient path of packing a bag and moving away.  That isn't something I want to contemplate.  I've fought hard to still be here.  I am invested.

I just keep thinking that there is space that is full of stars and planets; space that I create in the early spring as I thin the seedlings in my vegetable garden to allow the remaining plants room and resources to grow; space between the notes in a bit of music; green space that makes my neighborhood lovely and relaxing; space in my closet; spaces on a checker board; parking space; space around my dinner table; space within the atoms of the universe...

I don't yet know what I need in the way of relational space -- what we might need together.  I have not spent much time, in the last ten years, thinking about space.  While I think about it all, I offer some of the thinking that others have done about the subject:

Humor does not diminish the pain - it makes the space around it get bigger.
Allen Klein

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
Viktor E. Frankl

We need to give each other the space to grow, to be ourselves, to exercise our diversity. We need to give each other space so that we may both give and receive such beautiful things as ideas, openness, dignity, joy, healing, and inclusion.
Max de Pree

Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.
Joseph Campbell

The extent of your consciousness is limited only by your ability to love and to embrace with your love the space around you, and all it contains.
Napoleon Bonaparte

As long as you don't forgive, who and whatever it is will occupy rent-free space in your mind.
Isabelle Holland

Love is space and time measured by the heart.
Marcel Proust

Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.
Democritus

Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.
Orson Scott Card

Our time here is magic! It's the only space you have to realize whatever it is that is beautiful, whatever is true, whatever is great, whatever is potential, whatever is rare, whatever is unique, in. It's the only space.
Ben Okri

I think that the ideal space must contain elements of magic, serenity, sorcery and mystery.
Luis Barragan

When friendship disappears then there is a space left open to that awful loneliness of the outside world which is like the cold space between the planets. It is an air in which men perish utterly.
Hilaire Belloc

Make an empty space in any corner of your mind, and creativity will instantly fill it.
Dee Hock