A friend recently shared a TED Talk by the poet David Whyte called A Lyrical Bridge Between Past, Present and Future.
As I listened, I found myself nodding almost every minute.
He speaks about how we often imagine the past behind us and the future ahead of us, when in reality both are constantly present, shaping the person we are becoming.
I don’t think I would have heard those words the same way a month ago.
Since my father’s passing, I have found myself experiencing something unexpected.
It feels less like crossing a bridge than standing on its threshold.
There is grief, certainly.
But there is something else as well.
Part of me is deeply saddened.
And at the same time, there is a sense of heightened aliveness.
An unexpected attentiveness.
On the morning of my father’s wake, I noticed things I might otherwise have hurried past.
A poppy alive with a bee.
Roses spilling over garden fences.
Clouds parting just enough for the sun to appear.
A magnificent copper beech standing like a sculpture beside memorial stones bearing the names of those lost in wars long ago.
Here I stood, in the middle of grief, and yet beauty seemed to be everywhere.
On Sunday, the church service began with a hymn that opens:
Go out, my heart, and seek delight in this beloved summertime…
It moved me deeply when I learned that it was written shortly after the Thirty Years’ War, when much of Germany had been devastated and millions had died. Its author had himself experienced profound personal loss.
I looked toward the altar where a simple bouquet of wildflowers seemed to radiate joy through the church.
It felt as though everything around me was bathed in that same joy.
Children playing outside.
Summer unfolding.
Trees unfurling their leaves.
Flowers beaming.
Life’s quiet insistence on continuing to create itself.
The wildflowers, the children, the summer light, and my own grief seemed to belong to the same quiet unfolding.
Later, while sorting through my father’s house, I found a small ceramic vase that had stood on our family table for as long as I can remember.
Its woven pattern reminded me of my apprenticeship in tapestry design, my mother’s intricate knitting, my father’s quiet practicality, and the way ordinary objects become vessels for memory.
I painted it beside a tall blue glass vase.
One warm and textured. One cool and transparent.
I became fascinated not by the objects themselves, but by the cloth beneath them and the space that both connected and separated them.
Next day I painted my own feet, barely touching.
Another painting emerged: a tree reaching toward the neighboring house, almost touching, but not quite.
Without intending to, the same question kept returning:
What lives in the space between things?
Between two vessels.
Between two threads.
Between two breaths.
Between grief and joy.
Between where we have been and where we are going.
Looking back, I think this is why David Whyte’s talk resonated so deeply.
He speaks of standing at the threshold between past and future.
Listening to him, I realized that perhaps these in-between places are not interruptions after all.
Perhaps they are where life quietly asks us to pay attention.
If you have twenty minutes, I warmly recommend his talk:
A Lyrical Bridge Between Past, Present and Future
TED Talk by the poet David Whyte called A Lyrical Bridge Between Past, Present and Future
Studio Notes
The paintings in this post emerged from a recent Art Circle where we explored this same question together.
If you’d like to see the guided meditation, the complete painting process, and continue this unfolding inquiry with me inside the studio, I’ve shared the full replay together with additional reflections on Patreon.