Tag: poetry

*

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”