I have been reflecting a lot recently on the idea of thresholds as I’ve been journeying through multiple transitions in my life. John O’Donahue says, “A threshold is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms, atmospheres.” Jan Richardson says that thresholds are “those places we come to that lie between the life we have known and the life ahead of us.” They both describe the complexity and mystery of threshold spaces – dark, chaotic, unknown, scary. Intriguing, amazing, hopeful, places of wild possibility. They both refer to thresholds as invitations to stop, to be attentive, to listen within, to trust.
Advent is a threshold.
Here is a threshold poem I wrote, and then, one by Jan Richardson.
French Pantoum, written on retreat, Spring 2019
Kaitlyn Rusca
Open hands
All you need is in you, and by grace.
This is a threshold.
Motherhood is a fire – illuminating, painful, burning, transforming.
All you need is in you, and by grace.
Sit every morning, sip lemon water, ground yourself.
Motherhood is a fire – illuminating, painful, burning, transforming.
Marriage is like fire, too.
Everything begins in darkness.
Sit every morning, sip lemon water, ground yourself.
This is a threshold.
Everything begins in darkness.
Open hands
A Blessing Betwixt
Jan Richardson
May you abide
the places in between:
the thresholds, the passages,
the spaces of waiting
and patience and preparing.
May you give yourself
to the mysteries
that move us from what was
toward what is yet to be.
May you know
the company of the angels
who come only
to those betwixt
and who love
the liminal places
and the treasures
that they hold.
