Thresholds

In the Celtic Christian tradition, there are prayers for literally crossing a threshold, but also prayers for the metaphorical crossings in our lives: from dawn and dusk, for the start of a new task, for the beginning of a journey. The threshold is a designated space or time to open to God.

Think for a moment about the threshold.

In a house, it is the opening that keeps the structure from being a closed-in box; the threshold marks the place of setting out, the line that exposes a singular entity to a new day, a new face, the open air. In time, it marks the shift from one region of days into another: a birthday, the start of a new job, an emptying nest, a season of grief.

The threshold is also a marker of transition: between the annual seasons, between night and day, or even between work and home in the short space of a daily commute. In geographical space, it marks the edges of things: land meeting land, shore meeting ocean, earth meeting sky. Even the human body, outward-facing, is threshold-like; our eyes and ears are on the brink of ourselves as we open to others around us.

Maybe there are windows and doors in the soul -- casements of connection -- waiting to be opened, looked out through, stepped across. Maybe there is a waterway of lovingkindness yet to be traveled, a river that flows through the estuaries, past known land and out into the seas. But first, we must cross the threshold.

In John 10:9 we find Jesus speaking of himself as a threshold,  a door; “I am the door. If anyone goes in through me, he will be safe and sound; he can come in and out and find his food.” (JB Phillips)

Thomas Merton, a Trappist Monk prays in his “Thoughts in Solitude,”…

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, 

and the fact that I think 

that I am following your will does 

not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe 

that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me 

by the right road though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always 

though I may seem to be lost 

and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me, 

and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. 

Amen