Right now it is 4:30 am, and I am laying in bed waiting for the coffee maker to click on and for the dulcet tones of my husband’s alarm (Ripples, I believe) to sound. Until then, I wait and watch—perhaps feel—the traces of dreams and whispered ideas wander, uncaptured, into the darkness.

This liminal layer between sleeping and waking—space between inspiration and intention, aspiration and application—is a delicate time, easily shattered and lost.

I’ve gifted myself a new booklight today.

I have let a lot of inspiration and intention pass me by. From time to time, I recognize ideas that once lighted around me, like dust motes or fireflies, get taken up and shared by someone else.

I can’t blame my lack of booklights, but I can fault ignoring my own light.

Written after the disembodied “ambush your fear with your ferocious dream” on the May page of my 13 Holy Nights journal is the equally contextless command, “follow your own light” and a prayer:

Lord, Help me see where to go next. Thank you for the space you have given me in the space you have given me.

Saturday held a new moon and a solar eclipse—a double darkness—a space within a space. Monday—moon-day—finds me still in that darkness though a sliver of light edges through, like a door slightly ajar.

Today’s gift, a new book light, provides a moment of lucidity in a moment of liminality, a sliver of light that brings in the light.