Stepping over the Threshold

The Grace of Transformation

2 January 2024. Tuesday

Photo by Dawid Zawiła on Unsplash

“Thresholds are dangerous places, neither here nor there, walking across one is like stepping off the edge of a cliff in the naive faith that you’ll sprout wings halfway down. You can’t hesitate or doubt. You can’t fear the in-between.” —Alix Harrow The Ten Thousand Doors of January.

The Grace of Transformation

Change by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Changed? Yes, I will confess it – I have changed.
I do not love you in the old fond way.
I am your friend still – time has not estranged
One kindly feeling of that vanished day.

But the bright glamour which made life a dream,
The rapture of that time, its sweet content,
Like visions of a sleeper’s brain they seem –
And yet I cannot tell you how they went.

Why do you gaze with such accusing eyes
Upon me, dear? It is so very strange
That hearts, like all things underneath God’s skies,
Should sometimes feel the influence of change?

The birds, the flowers, the foliage of the trees,
The stars which seem so fixed, and so sublime,
Vast continents, and the eternal seas, -
All these do change, with ever-changing time.

The face our mirror shows us year on year
Is not the same; our dearest aim, or need,
Our lightest thought, or feeling hope, or fear,
All, all the law of alternation heed.

How can we ask the human heart to stay,
Content with fancies of Youth’s earliest hours?
The year outgrows the violets of May,
Although, maybe, there are no fairer flowers.

And life may hold no sweeter love than this,
Which lies so cold, so voiceless, and so dumb,
And will I miss it, dear? Why, yes,

we miss you violets, Until the roses come.

Thoughts. Stepping over the threshold to a new year, we carry with us so much of who we were, and hopes of what will be. While lingering a while on the threshold, leaning against the past, and not quite ready to plunge head first into the icy waters of January, we hold our dreams, hopes, and fears close to our hearts, and wonder.

Some resolve to change, as if they could pick and choose the events, circumstances, and surprises that await them. Some resolve not to change or resolve or care, as if life were a hum drum, run-of-the-mill event to run or not. Some imagine their plans unfolding in the perfectly ordered universe of their own minds, though most of our minds are anything but ordered. And some delight in the gloom, dark nights, and starkness. Others flee to hot, dry climes, seeking light like a moth to a flame. Some lean, contented to muse of dreams yet to be dreamed, beauty yet to be discovered, and life yet to be lived in its fullness.

On this chill January morning, where are you? What is going through your mind as you stand at the threshold of this new season of life? How are you celebrating the threshold, or mourning the passing of what was? What graces have been bestowed on you, and what do you carry forward to be your companion in life this new year?

POEMS:

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.

Help me cross into the present moment – into wonder, into Your grace: the “now-place,” where we all are, unfolding moment by moment.

—Gunilla Norris, Being Home

Now is the time to know
That all that you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider
A lasting truce with yourself and God.

Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong

Were just a child’s training wheels
To be laid aside

When you can finally live
With veracity
And love.

Hafiz is a divine envoy
Whom the Beloved
Has written a holy message upon.

My dear, please tell me,
Why do you still
Throw sticks at your heart
And God?

What is it in that sweet voice inside
That incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred

This is the time
For you to deeply compute the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace.

Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is sacred.

– Hafiz

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Daily Practice:

“The spiritual life is, at root, a matter of seeing. It is all of life seen from a certain perspective. It is waking, sleeping, dreaming, eating, drinking, working, loving, relaxing, recreating, walking, sitting, standing, and breathing. . . . Spirit suffuses everything; and so the spiritual life is simply life, wherever and whatever, seen from the vantage point of spirit." —Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice,

Tiny Prayers. As you leave the threshold and start the day, remember that a prayer can be as simple as “Thank you” or “Help me”. Allow tiny prayer to rise up in your heart and become part of your day’s activities. Intentional prayers bring grace to others as well as yourself.

Music of grace and change: As Stevie Wonder

Give us grace for today, and feed our famished affections.