*
The Truth Is in the Spaces
By Jane Tawel
July 24, 2026
*
Words are signposts only,
along the Narrow Way.
If you rush from point to point,
word to word,
you will never reach
the destination,
the place that you call “The Truth”.
Words will keep you traveling, traveling, traveling;
Anxious to find the right signs, or
Arguing with your copilots
Certain in your certainty,
that only you know best,
that your way is the Only!! route,
the single road to Happiness, to Heaven, or to Holiness;
And never knowing deeply, truly,
that there are many trued and true paths
leading Home.
*
Words, especially those on ancient maps,
can also keep you stuck,
content to stay within your deepening rut.
Eventually you can dig yourself
so far down and down and down
you barely have a finger to raise above your ditch,
a small and useless pointer at the stars which you can’t see,
down there in the dark and dank, determined ditch you’ve dug.
Or perhaps you raise an angry, upright digit
raised in indignation, raised against
the perceived enemies out there,
a digit wiggling out and up,
a solitary soldier in the slumbering stand you take
against awakening
and climbing up and out into
the fresh air of the Open Road.
*
For a long time, inviting others
to join you in your rut
can make you feel safe.
Until the floods come.
Your muscles that once could have found The Way,
Out into the Open Air, free in the Wide and Open Spaces,
are too weak by now, atrophied by the fears of your Unknowing.
You have languished long, far from the Road,
feeling secure in the tight confines of your pit,
Unable to pull yourself out of the rut of
your necessary belief that somehow, stuck down there,
you will eventually rise to Something, Somewhere Else.
But a pit leads no-where, my friend.
*
And in the hidey- hole that you’ve dug,
you never see the many ropes
that others have thrown down
to let you pull yourself out from
the ditch that you have dug around yourself.
So many lovely, lovely things,
have through the eons
of this lovely, lovely World’s circuitous
spiraling, mysteriously moving expedition,
thrown out life-lines,
shown, not spoken,
and pointed to all the Truth we ever need to know,
to Trust that only Love can lead The Way.
*
Nature has the truest Trueline.
Her roots have been threaded by Eternity,
threaded into thick, strong cords,
leading in and out, and down and up,
The Way of Our Salvation.
The World is full of Glory
to save us from drowning
in idolatry of texts,
from continually bashing ourselves
upon the rocky walls we make
out of our own silly and inflated egos.
Nature has never built a wall.
*
When the Flood comes,
and finds you in your high-walled ditch,
Words won’t help you float.
You need something with air in it for that,
Something that breathes,
Something buoyant like a raft.
Cast aside your useless euphemisms,
your cries and yells and sermons,
your documents and equations
none of these can save you.
You can only release yourself to The Flow.
Let go
and float
and let The River lift you up and out,
out from in your trenches,
out from your revenges and your fears,
and let The Water take you,
clean you and restore you,
back from chosen Death to freely given Life.
Trust the Flow.
All Rivers flow to The Source.
*
Truth is not a map
that anybody owns.
The Way is the play between,
the give and take
and push and shove
and gentle flow of
of letting go;
the looking up and out
and gazing long
at what is not there to be seen
but that which opens us.
And when we do not know
then we know
it is not our seeing that matters,
because we sense
we, at last, are Seen.
*
Don’t throw away your maps,
but rest assured,
while Compasses are often useful things,
True Truth is only in the gaps.
*
Truth is in the spaces –
The small bits and gentle pauses
The breaths between the hub-bub
and the clean-rooms that scour out
the hubris of our “feeling”
that we are right and they are wrong.
Peace is only found in the spaces
between the small stones in your shoes,
only in the vast open-places
glimpsed only
out of the corner of your eyes,
perhaps magnified into
kaleidoscopic wonder
by tears of sorrow or
tears of aching Awe.
*
I wish they had used better punctuation
in the things that Jesus said.
There needs to be a lot of Space —
— Between —
between the Truths that only Love can know.
I add a lot of dashes —
Between the words of Christ.
I AM —
The Way —
The Truth —
The Life —
Seek —
and you will find.
Love —
Love —
Love.
*
Yes — let me live and move and
Find my being
in the Dashes —
of
I Am-ness —
And Your IAm.
of
my seeking —
and Your finding.
of
my longing —
and the only thing that fills that longing —
Love.
*
The Spirit People do not hand us maps —
We make those up ourselves.
And while a map can be a useful thing,
we shouldn’t mistake it for The Way.
Look for the crevices and cracks –
There is a crack in everything,
That’s how the Light gets in.*
Look up from your maps,
And follow The Light.
There is a Light in The Window,
and The Light of The World
will lead us Home.
*
© Jane Tawel, 2026
*by Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”
Jane Tawel 