I dream of Jake and Deb sometimes, the two white lambs who spoke of purity and connection. And of life and death. I wrote a few days ago about this curious thing that was happening to me since my heart surgery in July. I find myself slow to get out of cars and out of chairs, I am one of those people who is always racing from one place to another, physically and mentally, my life is full, I am a chaos man, I am rarely still. Now,  I will sit and stare out of the car window for a minute or two before opening the door. Or before getting out of a chair.

I though it might be a physical thing, something to do with a healing heart, but I see that physically, I am stronger than I have been in many years, walking miles, lifting and carrying things, running on treadmills and pumping away on bikes. It is something else.

I was startled to get a bunch of e-mail and other messages from people who said the same thing has happened to them since surgery, or when someone they love has died, or when they have remembered a trauma or painful thing. Maria said it was a “Space In Between,” and this phrase caught in my mind.

It is a transition, a marker, the boundary between one thing and another. The space between the rocks of a stone wall, between notes of music, between verses of a poem, between the chapter of a book, or one photograph or painting or another, between an act of creativity and life, between love and loss and yes, life and death, the space between Jake and Deb, between pulling Jake out of a womb and then having to shoot him as he lay suffering and dying.

I think of the spaces between fear and strength, of uncertainty and clarity, of yearning and creativity.

My life has changed. Jake and Deb spoke to me, the horses speak to me, my heart speaks to me now, we have found one another after all of these years.  My heart beats differently now, it opens me to feeling and emotion, to the difference between one thing and another. Spaces define the things they separate, surround and bound. The message is clear to me now, spaces are precious and important, just as beautiful as the things they make possible and define.

This is a spiritual message, a creative message as a gift. I was good at rushing from one thing to another, in need of considering them, defining them, savoring the things that fill up my life. It is a gift, every time, an opening. I think of coming home, of leaving, of shopping, of writing, taking a photograph, going to cardiac rehab, leaving Maria, finding her again. Writing on my blog.

I have discovered something, the spaces in between my life. They are important to me. And how wonderful to discover that such a new and curious thing, something I might never have even considered or mentioned, is also part of the universal experience that connects those of us who life has opened up, and opens us up again and again.