Thresholds ~

I've been carrying a card around with me for the past few months, a card from my dearest friend. The front is brightly spattered with primary colors, and a chalk-lettered cheer from a kiddo named Eli. It reads: "God, give me guts".  On the back, my friend wrote about waiting, change, and threshold crossing.

'Threshold' has not been a big part of my vocabulary. I mean, I've heard about brides being carried over the threshold (is that still a thing?) My oldest connection to the word comes from a memory that my middle sister vehemently denies to this day, but when we were little kids, maybe 7, 9, I asked her where babies come from, and she said "it starts at the wedding ceremony when the preacher says "you may now kiss the bride", and by the time the bride gets home and her husband carries her over the threshold, she's pregnant". I figured out all on my own that something musta happened between points A and B, but I just left it there.

There have been some threshold crossings for me lately. I do believe I am being carried over these, carried by words of kindness and courage and protection offered by people who know me best. And by God, who has been nudging me to go ahead and take some long waited for, long anxious-about steps. Bob Bennett, in his song, "Mountain Cathedrals", sings: "I'm eager and afraid at the same time to move from where I've been." Me too Bob, me too.

Thresholds can be so frightening, there's just no telling what eyes will see or a heart will feel on the other side. And yet, thresholds can hold all kinds of hope. Hope that the new thing that God may be doing in a life will be be just the cool drink of water we were so thirsty for (Isaiah 43:19)

The friend who sent me this card, also sent me some quotes from Irish poet John O'Donohue. I had the sweet privilege of hearing John speak a handful of years ago before his untimely death. He was at Trinity Cathedral in Portland, and between the beauty of that sanctuary and the beauty of his words and brogue, I experienced a deep stillness. Since then, seeking out his books is a constant line item on my 'to-do' list. His name is scribbled on that post-it-note-in-my-head of authors to search the aisles for when I visit Powell's Books. He's also on my go-to list when I am shopping Amazon.com and need just a few more bucks-worth of stuff to get free shipping. (I am one of those suckers who doesn't get the arithmetic of this arrangement enough to understand that the more I spend the less "free" the shipping is, but if I get John O'Donohue out of the deal, I'm in).

I seek out his voice whenever I can. Just yesterday, the morning felt hard, heavy, anxious. I got to work and popped an old Krista Tippett/On Being interview with John into my ear ("The Inner Landscape of Beauty"). A girl can get just about anything done when she's got an Irish poet calming her down.

In this interview, John was talking about thresholds. There are lampposts I look for to guide me in my spiritual becoming. When I come across the same idea over and again from different voices and encounters, what I see in that is a little light in the dark to help me find my way. Maybe God gets it that I can be the tiniest bit dense and distracted, so God kindly and gently brings me back to what I need to consider. And where I am now, given the light I've been offered,  I am considering thresholds.

In this interview, John writes that the etymology of the word "threshold" comes from "threshing", the word used to describe separating the grain from the husk.

(side note - I love discovering the origin of words. Had I a chance to do it over, I'd go to school to earn a degree in etymology. Given the economy, I still may work in an insurance cubicle, but I'd have that sweet diploma)

He goes on to say that a threshold becomes a place where we move into more fullness. And that the act of crossing a threshold allows for the healing of patterns of repetition that keep us caught.

There are reasons we get stuck, reasons we stay stuck. Reasons, good reasons, we decide to be more afraid than eager to move from where we've been. It serves us in some way. If nothing changes, nothing changes, and that can be like a heavy down quilt on a bone chilly night. Comfortable.

The steps I've taken over some thresholds lately have been encouraged by the threshold-crossing I see going on around me. I watch, either up close or from a distance, people I care about deciding that comfortable isn't so comfortable after all. To be brave instead of paralyzed. To choose healing over defiance. To be grain instead of husk.

A card from a friend, a cheer from a little boy, a truth from an Irish poet. Sometimes the simplest things can open a door that has been jammed shut for a lifetime.

 

I am pretty sure at this point in my life that my middle sister was mistaken about where babies come from.  But things do look and feel a little different on this side of the threshold, so I'm watching for more light from those lampposts to see what is trying to get born.