Sometimes change is our choice and sometimes it isn’t, but either way, change always comes.  You can call it change or transition or a crossing or adjustment or a turning point or relocating or course correction or passage or a shift or movement, and if it’s really big, you can call it conversion or progress or metamorphosis or transformation. However, I am calling what I’m experiencing now a “liminal threshold process.”  I suppose “liminal” and “threshold” are somewhat redundant, and “process” might be obvious, but nevertheless, that’s what I am calling it.

An interesting and thorough explanation of the etymology of the word “threshold” by linguist Anatoly Liberman can be found here.  This etymology indicates that threshold did not originally mean part of a doorway, but instead points to the ancient threshing process, used to separate the grain from its husk.

And the word liminal, defined as “relating to the initial transitional stage of a process or occupying a position at or on both sides of a boundary,” is derived from the Latin word limen that translates as threshold.  I like the word liminal, because it evokes in me a feeling of something gradual, something shimmering that is beautiful and numinous, and mysterious.  So that when we are plunged into darkness, if the time is right and we can remain still, perhaps we can invoke this shimmering beauty and remain open to the threshold on which we stand.  I like the idea that we have the ability to eventually find this beauty, even in our most difficult days of grief or confusion.

Paying attention to the thresholds in our lives and owning our response to change is critical to our spiritual growth.  Each threshold has a beginning, a middle, and an end.  Sometimes, when change is unanticipated and thrust upon us, it feels like a step function, an irreversible boot across the threshold into a nebulous, not yet fully defined future, on the other side.  To be sure, I have experienced such inevitably difficult, out-of-my-control situations like that, where the beginning stage of the threshold is almost instantaneous.  But, under similar circumstances, I have found that you can only begin by slowing down and getting oriented to the threshold process.  Not much can happen if you are just always running away.

However, my current situation and the threshold I am working through, exist by my choice, because I am retiring soon and will be moving to Denver.  Andy and I think this relocation will provide us with a great combination of urban life and easy access to outdoor activities. I am trying to approach the threshold mindfully, recognizing that change is not simply black and white, where at one moment you are on one side and the next you are across the divide.  I have pulled out my journal for the first time in awhile and that has been helpful.  I think I just need to slow down and maybe keep hovering mentally over the threshold, just to be sure that I don’t miss the shimmering liminal parts of the upcoming move.

Yes, I am so excited (!!) and am running to embrace this change, but it is still a major liminal threshold process and more than a little bit stressful.  Yes, Andy and I have been dreaming and planning for this new life that awaits, for years now, but it seems like these last few months are taking forever.  In fact, this blog post has been taking me forever to write as well – I started early and must have been working on it off and on for at least 2-3 months by now.  I feel like I am caught in a slow-motion holding pattern that reminds me a little bit of the last summer before I went away to college.  Similar to my response then, I have been more irritable and moody than normal and find myself withdrawing a little from friends and co-workers.  I am probably doing so to try to (unsuccessfully) minimize how sad I feel about the goodbyes and this monumental change that is coming.  This letting go of the life I have built in Houston for the past 32 years will surely be challenging, but I trust that it will make room for new friends and experiences.

This image is of the acrylic monoprint I made that shows how I see that this process is working for me.  The main thing I have tried to express is that moving across these thresholds can definitely be slow and messy. The quote that I plan to match it with for my book is by Gunilla Norris, whose book Being Home is full of poetic meditations on daily tasks such as folding laundry, taking out the trash and washing the dishes.  Yes really!

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 (1991)

 

I like the reminder of how pervasive thresholds are and how important it is to manifest daily awareness of life, by living in the “now place” present moment.  The concept of a liminal threshold as a metaphor for change has captured my imagination a little, and I have been investigating different aspects of it.  Several authors I respect greatly have insightful things to say about thresholds.

For example, Jan Richardson writes that thresholds are sacred times and places to discern what is most important to us, and that ultimately determines how we will tend our new beginnings. This is quite helpful, as a reminder to slow down to threshold time and to pay more attention to the careful tending and mending of these crossings.

In addition, Paula D’Arcy writes, “Thresholds demand a willingness to walk in new directions.  They ask us to ‘not know’ we, who are so in love with knowing.  They insist that we be led where we never intended to go.  They will not respect the hunger that feeds the ego and keeps us small.  They speak of a Love far different from the one we know.  They call to us to awaken from sleep and see the world for the first time.”

Finally, Joyce Rupp has written an incredible book called Open the Door that is a six-week collection of daily readings that I have been working with in my journal a little bit.  It is truly comprehensive and covers open doors, closed doors, unlocking doors, knocking on doors, doors of growth, pretend doors, big doors, tiny doors, waiting at the door, standing in the middle of the door, swinging open the door, stepping through the door, shutting or slamming the door, and the door beyond the door.  As always, practicality leads to the need to sit with our doors, open or otherwise.  But I must say that, at least for today, I resonate with the Week 2 Day 4 reading about “pounding on the door.”  I am a little impatient to get moving and am looking forward to crossing over to the other side of this liminal threshold.  Or at least to moving on from the beginning to the middle part of the process…..

 

Reference 1: Liberman, Anatoly.  “Our Habitat: Threshold.” Oxford University Press, OUPblog blogpost,  https://blog.oup.com/2015/02/threshold-word-origin-etymology, February 2015.

Reference 2:  Norris, Gunilla.  “Being Home: Discovering the Spiritual in the Everyday.” HiddenSpring, Mahwah NJ, 1991.

Reference 3:  Richardson, Jan. “Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and Christmas.” Cleveland OH, United Church Press, 1998.

Reference 4:  D’Arcy, Paula. “Sacred Threshold: Crossing the Inner Barrier to a Deeper Love.” Crossroad Publishing, New York, NY, 2004.

Reference 5: Rupp, Joyce. “Open the Door: A Journey to the True Self.”  Notre Dame IN, Sorin Books, 2012.

Image 1:  ArchivesACT, Creative Commons, CC BY-NC 2.0,  “Threshold,” Sculpture by Leonard Shillam (1915-2005) at Canberra Technical College, Australia, 1967.

Image 2: “Sacred Liminal Threshold,” acrylic monoprint by Julie Henkener, 2021.

Image  3: “On the Threshold at Westminister Abbey,” Julie Henkener, September 2021.