Threshold is a line

If you go back to the etymology of the word “threshold,” it comes from “threshing,” which is to separate the grain from the husk. So the threshold, in a way, is a place where you move into more critical and challenging and worthy fullness. And I think there are huge thresholds in every life. I mean, for instance, I’ll give a very simple example of it: you are in the middle of your life in a busy evening, there are 50 things to do and you suddenly get a phone call that somebody you love is gone. It takes 10 seconds to communicate that information, but when you put the phone down, you are already standing in a different world. Because suddenly everything that seemed so important before is all gone, and now you are thinking of this.

So the given world that we think is there and the solid ground we are on is tentative. And I think a threshold is a line which separates two territories of spirit, and I think how we cross it is the key thing.

There is beauty in that — because beauty isn’t all about just nice, loveliness like. Beauty is about more rounded substantial becoming. It stands to reason when we cross a new threshold what we do is heal patterns of repetition that were in us that had us caught up somewhere. And in our crossing them, we cross on to new ground where we just don’t repeat what we’ve been through in the last place we were. So beauty in this sense is about an emerging fullness, a greater sense of grace and elegance, a deeper sense of depth, and also a kind of homecoming for the memory of an unfolding life.

~ by Natalie on 28 March.