At any time you can ask yourself: At which threshold am I now standing? At this time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter? What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold? What gift would enable me to do it? A threshold is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms and atmospheres. Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience or a stage of life that it intensifies toward the end into a real frontier that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up
~ John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us
They begin to arrive sometime in early May. The mail carrier delivers the envelope with the photo of a young, fresh face gazing toward a camera held by a professional or a doting parent. There is always a smile. Sometimes the card also carries an image of this same face, recognizable but so much younger, a treasured memory of the child that has now become a young adult, now being launched into the world. These invitations to graduation parties find their way to refrigerator doors and other areas where they can accompany the receiver in daily acts, their presence a reminder of the passing of years, the making of moments.
Their faces and the promise of their lives are reminders of the thresholds that shape our lives. We mark them. We celebrate them. Sometimes we mourn what has been. We are filled with expectation for what is yet to be, unknown, to be discovered. If we are willing, we are aware that the threshold is a place of movement from what has been toward what will be. Thresholds are powerful and always present.
I was reminded of this last week for many reasons. Not only have I been gazing upon the faces of high school graduates I have known since they were born but I also crossed my own threshold into the world of retirement. And one of my younger colleagues is about to make a leap into a new life, a new world of being as he moves to California. In talking with him we shared some conversation about the strangeness and yet the excitement of this movement. I used the word ‘threshold’ to describe it.
Threshold is not a word that comes up much in every day language. But saying it aloud, I realize it has stuck with me. I have noticed how I have been saying the word in my head with regularity and noticing the many thresholds, doorways, that get crossed in any given day. And I have also noticed how ‘threshold’ is both actual, literal, and a marvelous metaphor. Which, of course, is what John O’Donohue the wise, prophetic poet was referring to…inviting the reader to consider to fullest range of this word.
“…it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience or a stage of life that it intensifies toward the end into a real frontier that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up.”
The graduates whose thresholds are before them in numerous ways are embarking on frontiers that will take them to places they never imagined, meeting people that will challenge and surprise. This always happens when our hearts are being passionately engaged and we are awake. And this threshold gift is offered to each of us, no matter our life stage, when we are willing to open our hearts to the what next, to the expansive nature of the Universe, to see the world with Sacred Eyes.
My prayer is that each of us, graduate or otherwise, find amazing ways for our hearts to be passionately engaged and woken up. It seems to me the future or our world depends upon it.