THRESHOLDS

Today, just like any other day, is a threshold--and a fresh one at that. 

It didn’t exist yesterday. It'll be gone tomorrow. Unlike most or all of the physical thresholds at the base of doorways (some centuries old) we will cross over in the course of this day, the kind of threshold I’m talking about is incredibly short-lived. Twenty four hours. Unlike a physical threshold, this one is invisible. Yet it is every bit as real--and chances are, it may actually be more relevant than its physical counterpart.

To put a finer point on it, this moment is an even fresher threshold. What might it be inviting me to cross over, to leave behind, to step forward into? These are great questions and questions, especially good ones, are themselves thresholds. I know how we all love answers, but answers encourage us to stay where we are. Questions, beg us to keep moving. 

To state the obvious, every opportunity is a threshold. But so, too, is every doubt. Every fear. Every feeling. Every intuition. Every idea. Every choice. Every decision...just as surely as every breath is a threshold into yet another moment of physical life. In short, life isn’t just an endless landscape of thresholds. It is itself a threshold....one day at a time.  

What does it take to cross over a threshold? Three things: trust, action, and consciousness. TRUST--that making this crossing, be it huge or humblingly insignificant, is something we can and must do to be true to ourselves--and in doing so, true to God and true to the world.  ACTION--to act upon that trust--and to do so by making a real-time decision to stay where we are or to go through it. And so, CONSCIOUSNESS--that is, the intentional awareness of the threshold and at least some of its import. After all, not every threshold is worthy or wise to cross.

One of life’s true wisdoms is learning to discern the thresholds that lie in front of us in any given moment. If we have any difficulty recognizing them, we can focus on the specific issues or struggles we’re experiencing and put them to the test, asking ourselves, “In what sense does this situation or crisis identify a threshold about which I must trust, make a conscious decision and then take action? (Ironically, we often hesitate crossing over the thresholds that our personal crises call for--and our refusal to cross over them is, at least in part, causing our crisis!) 

Finally, once we cross over a threshold we can’t ever go back. The doorway we came through no longer exists. What was once a doorway is now a wall. We can’t go back because now we know something new and that something new changes things, changes us, changes our options and opportunities. So, changed, we can’t find the old door. Oh, there are other doorways we can pass back through but none of them will take us to the same old place as before. Besides, there are good reasons we shouldn’t go back even if we could--and would! Going forward may be confusing, even frightening, but very likely, the biggest reason you and I are still here is because we are most alive, creative and determined under these confusing, if frightening, circumstances.

Today. Let’s take note of the physical thresholds we cross and use them as thresholds into thinking of all the other thresholds in our lives. 

TODAY.

LET'S GIVE THE WORLD & OURSELVES A GIFT.

LET’S TAKE TIME TO THINK ABOUT HOW WE THINK.