On the Threshold
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Thresholds are sacred. Religions of all kinds, cultures of all times and places, have ways to mark the moments when we are on a threshold between one state of being and another.
As a culture, the United States is a bit lacking in rituals for such moments. We mark weddings, of course, and deaths, and births and graduations. But it’s a little thin considering all the many, many thresholds that we cross in our lives.
On the other hand, we are a greatly diverse culture, weaving together many cultures with all their riches of millennia of human development. And so we can all learn from the very beautiful traditions that exist among us to mark thresholds, whether or not they are from the cultures in which we personally grew up. For example, some cultures, such as Korea and China, mark the 100th day of life. The Diné, the people of the Navajo nation, mark a baby’s first laugh. Many cultures mark a time of coming of age: 12 or 13 years for a Bat or Bar Mitzvah to mark the taking on of adult responsibility in the Jewish world, 15 years to mark a girl’s becoming a woman in much of Latin America, etc. Around the world, people have devised rituals as needed.
And yet sometimes we feel them to be necessary and don’t have them available to us. When we don’t have such rituals and know we are upon a threshold, we may seek them out or create them. Many feel the lack of a ritual to mark the end of a marriage. We have so many to mark its beginning, but nothing to mark its end. So some people crossing the threshold that is divorce have created “marriage wakes” or other rituals to honor that momentous threshold, to honor the beauty of what is on both sides: the life shared and all the hopes of that marriage, and the new life that awaits on the other side. I think that part of the attraction of neo-Paganism for so many, including Unitarian Universalists, is that it pays attention to large and small thresholds and provides—creates—new rituals to recognize those moments.
And UU congregations do have our own threshold rituals. We have Coming of Age services, sharing of joys and sorrows, the welcome of new members, the dedication of children when they arrive, the memorial celebration of someone among us when they depart, the care that we give each other at times of sickness and birth and dying. Bringing a meal to someone who has just emerged from surgery or who has lost a loved one isn’t just a pragmatic matter meant to help out with a daily task that has become difficult. It is also a way of honoring the occasion and witnessing—being present for, and listening to—a time of transition. It is an offering and a celebration.
Physical thresholds, literal doorways, get a lot of attention around the world for the same reason that we need to have attention given to these figurative thresholds: they are symbolic of those great moments of in-between. The lintel of a Maori meeting house, for example, is elaborately carved with holy images, because as one passes below it, one is moving from one holy domain into another. The outer doors and gates of a Jewish home bear mezuzot, which hold excerpts from the holy Torah, to remind those who pass through of their most important commitments as they come and go—to point out Who is with you as you cross every threshold of your life. In ancient Greece, each part of a doorway had its god: the lintel had a god, the posts had a god, the door, the hinges, the sill (the threshold itself). All of these practices of marking physical doorways, like the practices of marking the figurative doorways of our lives, are meant to say the same thing to us: Pause here with awareness. Know that when you are in the space between, you are in a sacred space of your life.
But why are thresholds sacred? I think there are two basic reasons. They are about identity: they are a place of acute awareness or questioning of who we are, what we are, to what community of people and land we belong. And they are about change: shedding one identity and taking up another. In other words, they are about being and becoming, that great balance of our lives.
The origin of the word is exactly what you might think from its sound: threshold comes from thresh, threshing being the removing of a grain from its inedible shell. And when we are upon a threshold, we are in the act of stepping out—like the grain that is losing its skin—stepping out of our old identity and stepping into a new one that is yet unknown.
So a question for us as a spiritual community is: what do we need at such moments? What can we provide for each other?
We need to honor what is on both sides of the doorway: to celebrate the whole of our lives, the self we are leaving behind as well as the self toward which we are going.
We need something—some words, some music, some ceremony—that will recognize the significance of this moment, not leave it unmarked as if it means nothing. And we need one another.
Thresholds can be particularly challenging when our culture—which might be our community, our family, our larger culture—doesn’t have a way to recognize the threshold. So I’d like to invite you to take a moment to pause and reflect silently on a time when you might have been at a threshold in your life (perhaps right now), and our culture offered no particular way to recognize it as such.
And before you take a moment of silence for that, I want to acknowledge that in some way it is, if not a trick question, then a tricky question, because to some extent it’s hard even to perceive a threshold when no one else is recognizing it. So here are some feelings and thoughts that might be a clue that we are crossing a threshold, that we are in that in-between land:
We might have an awareness of a first or last of something. We might have tears. There might be a sense of momentousness. Time might get strange: things slowing down or speeding up much too fast.
We might have a powerful sensation that there ought to be music for this moment—some kind of inner soundtrack.
We may have a strong desire to talk to other people about what is happening to us, or a desire to talk to ourselves about it—in a journal, or by the creation of some private ritual marking the moment.
Just take a moment to reflect on whether you have had such a moment.
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It’s never too late to honor a threshold. If there is a threshold that made you think, “Mm, that never really got marked as such,” in some sense you are still there. And that’s fine. You might always be, in some way. But it is not too late for others to help you to honor it, to recognize that you are in a very sacred place.
Of course, the threshold isn’t always where and when we think it is. It’s not always the spot that gets a highlight, even from our community.
And it’s not only a moment. When is it that love arises, so that people know they wish to marry? Is it just one moment? It’s certainly not the moment in which they say “I do.” When does it die, and they decide to part? That also is not just one moment. Even with birth: a person is born in an instant of gasping for breath, but childbirth takes hours, and gestation takes months, and the preparation for parenthood and for new life takes lifetimes. A person dies, perhaps, in a discrete moment, when the last breath is drawn or the brain ceases its hum, but dying can be a journey of years. We may mark a single symbolic moment later, like an anniversary, birthday, or date of death, but when we are on the threshold, it is much wider than something we can cross in one moment. We feel ourselves in the in-between for long, long periods of time. And that can be very beautiful and sweet and good, and it can, at the same time, be excruciatingly painful.
This, perhaps, is when we need each other the most. This is when we need words and art, music and symbols, stories and the squeeze of a hand, to say: Yes, this time is sacred. It is a time of becoming for you; it is a time of being for you. Time has slowed down and held us here, in mid-step, in the no-one’s land between what we used to be and what we will be. Here we are, not knowing exactly what or who we are in this moment.
So why are thresholds sacred? Because they teach us to live fully in that in-between and that unknowing.
And why is this so important? Because that’s where we really live all the time. All the time. Honoring threshold times is a practice that helps us to live more fully in the in-between, uncertain, traveling place where we always, in some way, are.
Now, the arrivals are real too. Being a wife is real, and being a widow is real. Being a child and being an adult. Being single and being married. Being a student, being a worker. Each of those states is real and we try to live there fully too. And also, in the deepest sense, we are always and at every moment poised between two states, between two times, between two selves.
To be here, fully present when we are neither inside the temple nor outside it, neither child nor adult, neither spouse nor widow, but right on the threshold, in that state of in-between and unknowing, is the hope of our lives. It is the only time that we ever really have.
There is a Jewish prayer that is heard at every holiday and every momentous occasion. The beginning is the standard for a short Jewish prayer of blessing: Baruch atah adonai . . . Blessed are you, Lord, Ruler of the universe. This one closes, shehecheyanu—who has kept us alive—v’kiyimanu—and protected us—v’higianu l’azman hazeh—and brought us to this time. It is called the Shehecheyanu after its key word: who has kept us alive, or you might say, kept us in life, or more simply, en-livened-us. One says this prayer at beginnings: the first night of a long holiday such as Hanukah, the first time one eats matzah during Passover; also at the birth of a child, and upon moving into a new home. It is a threshold prayer, one that may be said at any moment that is a new experience or an infrequent experience, to mark it as a time of transition. And what is it that is being said on each such occasion? Shehecheyanu—“who has enlivened us.” So that we might remember what has brought us life, so that we might remember: this is life. No matter what is happening, no matter how in-between we feel, and how in flux our lives are, we are alive and we are grateful for this very moment.
- Grief and Gravity - October 1, 2020
- On the Threshold - January 1, 2020
- Living by Love - February 1, 2015
