Thresholds

Celtic spirituality has within it a deep consciousness of the thresholds of life.   As I have moved along in my spiritual journey, I have noted them, but always thought of them in other ways.  Most traditional sanctuaries have an inner space known as a narthex.  A narthex is a smaller space between the outside secular world and the inner world of the holy space.  It might be called a transition room between the profane and the sacred.  And, of course every moment of ending precipitates a moment of beginning.  Old passes and new becomes.  The static moment in the middle Celtic spirituality would refer to as a threshold.

 

As we move through these threshold places and times, it is always true that we have one foot in one world and one in another.  When we give reflection life in our inner being, it becomes easy to consider how all the world and all of time is nothing more than a threshold.  As believers in Christ we live with one foot in the physical world and one foot in the spiritual world.  We are residents of earth and citizens of heaven.  And so it is with our time as well.  We have one foot in the present and one in the world opening before us.  Nothing ever stays still.  Change is constant.  And in the midst of what is and what is to come, we live.  We always live in that static moment of in between.

 

To live in such a threshold filled world and time requires faith.  Each step we take removes us from where we are into a world that is beyond our control.  And while we think we are in control of that next step, such a thought is largely an illusion.  Only God knows what we think we know.  We are simply alive in between here and there.  We are paused on a threshold which announces something new is before us.   Such is where God has put us and such is where God intends for us to let our faith live.