The Lantern and the Wing
on softly unfolding along the liminal path
I didn’t mean to begin a painting that day; I was in the mood to experiment. I had a piece of rag board and a box of cold-encaustic paints that a manufacturer had sent to me to review, several years before. I mostly work in watercolour, and the opacity of these paints never appealed to me; I stuck them on a shelf and quietly forgot them. When I found them again while tidying up I decided to give them a try before donating them to the local Boys and Girls Club. I wasn’t thinking about process or product, I just felt like exploring with them, moving colour across a surface—something tactile and soul-soothing.
I mixed up some grey and created a variety of tints with red and white, a touch of yellow, thinking of the cherry blossoms blooming, and spread the paint around the board, experiencing how it felt. It didn’t go very well at first. It felt dull. Sludgy. Opaque in every sense. More than once, I nearly gave up, but something—some gentle insistence—kept me at the edge of the work.
Then, without thinking, I pulled a brush across the surface before it had dried. It felt like an instant mistake. The brush lifted paint as it moved, revealing layers hidden underneath, hints of light and texture I hadn’t meant to create. Suddenly, there was possibility. A crack in the dullness. Something began to shimmer.
So I stayed with it.
I followed the marks like Ariadne’s thread. I let the painting lead me. Eventually, what began as nothing—an experiment, an almost-discard—became something I now call beautiful, framed and hanging in a gallery.
This is how it begins sometimes.
Standing in the in-between.
Trusting the gesture before the meaning.
Later that day I sat down with my notebook and shuffled my favourite two tarot decks. I love to pull cards as a form of self-reflection, and when I pulled the Hermit card—not once, but twice, from two different decks—it had my attention. I felt the echo of that painting moment rising to meet me.
The first card, from The Wild Unknown Tarot by Kim Krans, showed a turtle, withdrawn into its shell, a lantern burning quietly on its back. It might be my favourite depiction of the Hermit archetype, ever; I even have a copy of the card framed on my desk. The second card, from another beloved deck, Remembering the Sweet Fool Tarot by Tricia Murray, revealed something quite different—an ancient face emerging from the shadows, eyes closed, with a golden bird perched like a crown of light. Two versions of solitude. Two ways of carrying light into the world, even from within a very insular place. One moves slowly through the dark, carrying the flame with patience and steadiness. The other becomes the flame—still and receptive, allowing the light to land. At first, I didn’t know which one I was. The steady keeper of the fire? Or the silent one, waiting for the shimmer?
As I returned to that painting experience—the not knowing, the mistake that opened into beauty—I saw that I had lived both. And perhaps that’s what liminal space truly asks of us: To be both the one who stays, and the one who listens. The one who moves with quiet faith, and the one who becomes still enough to receive the unexpected. One is earth-bound, steady, self-contained. The other is ethereal—part revelation, part mystery. I have always felt the Hermit in me as being the one who stays, who keeps tending the ordinary and uncertain spaces, believing in the possibility that something might yet lift—might shimmer—if given enough time and care. While painting that morning, I was the turtle who kept going, even when the paint felt sludgy and hopeless. I was also the quiet figure who really did nothing at all—only watched as something winged and bright touched down unexpectedly.
The turtle carries the light. The bird is the light.
The flame I tend in solitude is also the spark that calls insight to me.
There’s an old fairy tale that has lived quietly in me since childhood. It is called Star Money, from the Brothers Grimm. It tells of an orphan girl who has lost everything but the clothes on her back and a small crust of bread, who walks alone into the woods one snowy night. Along the way, she gives everything she has left to others in need: her last piece of bread, her cloak, even her socks and shoes. At the end of the story she stands beneath the tall fir trees, bare except for the the thinnest linen underdress, empty-handed, with nothing left to offer. And then—when she has surrendered it all—stars begin to fall from the sky, drifting down, mingling with the snowflakes that fall like swan’s feathers. Silver coins, luminous and sudden, are filling her out-stretched shift as if heaven had taken notice.
I didn’t understand why this story and the illustrations of it have haunted me since I was a child, but now perhaps I do. It’s not a story about reward. It’s not about sacrifice either, not really. It’s about the mystery of what arrives when we let go. The girl doesn’t ask for anything. She doesn’t expect to be saved. She simply walks forward, giving what she has, staying true to her own gentleness. She enters the threshold space—naked, uncertain, luminous—and something meets her there. Just like in my painting experience that day, and on many days before and since. And just like in those two Hermit cards.
I’ve often found that this kind of Hermit wisdom doesn’t just live in the studio, or on the tarot card, but it also lives in the tenderest corners of our actual lives. In the ache that comes from longing, uncertainty, of not knowing what lies ahead. In the quiet choice to stay the course, even when nothing seems to be changing. I am going to tell you a small part of a very tender story now, that there is so much more to, but this is enough for now.
There was a time in my life when I fell in love with someone I could not have.
He was my best friend, and I knew—quietly, fully—that it was the realest love I had ever known, different from and other than my love for my children. The kind of knowing that doesn’t need permission. The kind that lives in the depth of your bones. I also knew, just as clearly, that it might never become anything more. That I might carry this love like a lantern, quietly glowing in the dark, for the rest of my life. I didn’t try to move on, I didn’t try to fix or change it, because I knew: nothing else would ever compare. I knew from the depths of my being that I would rather be alone for the rest of my life, than betray what I knew in my heart was true.
So I stayed. In the ache. In the waiting-that-wasn’t-really-waiting. I made a solid peace with knowing I would never have what I most wanted. I transformed that grief into my writing, into my life, into giving whatever I could from the bounty within myself that came to me from this silent, profound love. I was happy in the knowing, in the spending time with my friend in all the ways that I could. We created many things together, through our shared vision of the world we wanted to live in, for many many years.
And then—unexpectedly, impossibly—he was there. It is still the biggest surprise of my life, the day he arrived to my doorstep, that he arrived in my life. It was as if the world had quietly rearranged itself to make space for what had always been true.
I am telling you this for the miracle of it. Not the miracle that he came, but the miracle that I had learned to love the in-between. To hold the flame without needing a destination. To remain open, even when nothing was guaranteed. The deep knowing without the need to grasp or force, the capacity to remain in love without demand, and to wait in the threshold. It’s this that I want to express: that dwelling in the in-between is not passivity, and it’s not despair. It’s presence. It’s faith without outcome. It’s choosing not to bargain with the mystery. To chose not betray what was real for something that wasn’t—that’s the flame the turtle carries. And the moment my best friend appeared on my doorstep—that’s the golden bird landing. This is the soft human truth of it. I am not trying to prove that truth, but to simply say—this is how it has lived in me. We don’t always need to name what truth arrives. Sometimes it is enough to become so still that we can notice the shimmer on its wings.
My questions remain many. How do we stay open in the in-between? How do we listen when we don’t yet understand what we’re hearing? How do we not lose faith? Maybe that’s the real invitation. Not to seek answers, but to stay with the questions. To let the not-knowing be the fertile ground. Maybe some things are not meant to be resolved, but instead are meant to be tended.
Like a flame.
Like a love.
Like a painting that begins in dullness and ends in light.
Tender. Tended.
I return, again and again, to this quiet truth: The shimmer arrives when we stay.
This month begins a collaboration between me & you, my dear readers. You can read more about it here. Submissions are already rolling in and I am so grateful. This is going to be very special.
One time donation? Buy me a coffee ☕️
Absolutely beautiful, thank you for offering us your words, Kateri!
This is such a beautiful piece of writing. The artwork shines through you. Thank you honey.