On the Threshold…
“The familiar life horizon has been outgrown: the old concepts, ideals, and emotional patterns no longer fit; the time for the passing of a threshold is at hand.” —Joseph Campbell
“The time for the passing of a threshold is at hand,” says Joseph Campbell, when our current way of life, thinking, and being “no longer fit.” It feels like this is where we are as a country, and for many, in their lives.
From joyful graduations to the grief of loss of loved ones, jobs, or ways of life, many are being asked (or forced) to cross a threshold into a new way of being.
We always have a choice in how we respond to these times. We can choose to exist in the past memories or fight for the status quo (a fight we always end up losing) or embrace the chaos of a new beginning and cross that threshold.
“We stand in life at midnight; we are always at the threshold of a new dawn.” –Martin Luther King, Jr.
This awareness of crossing a threshold inspires me to begin taking back my power from the shock and despair engendered by what’s unfolding in the world to being part of orchestrating something better… “a new dawn.”
What threshold are you being called to cross? How can you help make the experience a “new dawn” instead of a dark night? What do you need to let go of to make room for something new you help create instead of resist?
May you be blessed with the courage to cross the thresholds of your life with hope for the new dawn, compassion for yourself when you struggle to let go, and the willingness to create a new path.
The Power of a Threshold
“I write because to write a new sentence, let alone a new poem, is to cross the threshold into both a larger existence and a profound mystery. A thought was not there, then it is.
An image, a story, an idea about what it is to be human, did not exist, then it does. With every new poem, an emotion new to the heart, to the world, speaks itself into being.”
—Jane Hirshfield
Love is the Threshold
“The truth is, indeed, that love is the threshold of another universe.”
—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
It Demands Courage
“To acknowledge and cross a new threshold is always a challenge. It demands courage and also a sense of trust in whatever is emerging. This becomes essential when a threshold opens suddenly in front of you, one for which you had no preparation.”
—John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us
Crossing the Threshold
Many times today I will cross over a threshold.
I hope I will catch a few of those times.
I need to remember that my life is, in fact,
a continuous series of thresholds:
from one moment to the next,
from one thought to the next,
from one action to the next.
Help me appreciate how awesome this is.
How many are the chances to be really alive . . .
to be aware of the enormous dimension
we live within.
On the threshold the entire past
and the endless future
rush to meet one another.
They take hold of each other and laugh.
They are so happy to discover themselves
in the awareness of a human creature.
On the threshold the present breaks all boundaries.
It is a convergence,
a fellowship with all time and space.
We find You there.
and we are found by You there.
Help me cross into the present moment –
into wonder, into Your grace:
that “now-place,” where we all are,
unfolding as Your life moment by moment.
Let me live on the threshold as threshold.
—Gunilla Norris, Being Home, A Book of Meditations
