I know almost everyone says that blogging is over. Conventional wisdom suggests that blogs have been replaced by 280 characters on Twitter, pictures on Instagram, podcasts, and a multitude of other social media options that I do not begin to understand. But, I am hopelessly stubborn and find it hard to give up on lost causes. So I have blogged on.

For the past thirteen years, over 200 times a year, I have sent something out into the great mysterious vacuum of cyberspace, using WordPress, until IASP now has an archive of over 3,500 individual posts. That is over 1.5 million words. I do understand how insane this is.

Many times over the past thirteen years, I have tried to break it off. But, something has always drawn me back. Some issue, thought, observation, or current event has always emerged that I wanted to speak about and so I have written again.

It is time to make another attempt to lay down this little vessel of words. I do not know if I will pick it up again after a break or if this really is the end this time. I just know that I need to open up some space in my life to see what emerges. And, at the moment, ironically, “In A Spacious Place” has become for me, not so much “A Spacious Place,” as one more source of clutter in my life.

Space is challenging, even frightening, for most of us. We do not sit easily with empty. We are programmed to fill our days with busy and “productive.” We have a deep compulsion to try to make something of ourselves, to create meaning by forging at least the illusion of having an impact.

But, what if I don’t have to create my life? What if I don’t need to find or manufacture meaning? What if the meaning of life is simply living? Could it be enough simply to be alive?

Jesus is reported to have said,

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.

Matthew 6:28b, 29

A lily is of value just because it exists. It needs no other justification. It does not have to “toil” or “spin” in order to make itself worthwhile. It needs only to be, to be what it is as it is.

There is not enough being in most human lives. Being is crowded out by all our doing. Even when we might have an unintended moment of space, we find a way to fill it with some grand project.

The world needs places where the knots of tension that shape so much of life have the opportunity to untangle a bit. The human community needs people who are able to live at a quieter gentler pace, who have moved beyond the compulsive need for frenetic activity and are able to sit sill and just be, listening to the deeper voices of existence and living in tune with the subtle rhythms of life.

The question that space raises is whether we believe and trust in an inner energy, direction, guide that will call forth appropriate action when the time is right without our having to bring pressure and determination to bear in order to force something to take place.

Is it possible that right action might emerge if I listen deeply enough? Is it possible that the appropriate level of activity might manifest itself without the additional burdens of pressure and guilt that so often seem to accompany self-generated busyness?

Space is a small experiment which I do not have an unlimited amount of time left to try. I will see how well I do.