Thresholds

Thresholds.  The boundary point between two spaces.  A threshold may be as subtle as the delineation leading from one room to the next.  In its complexity, a threshold is a moment in time that requires the response to a specific call.  A call where a choice must be discerned.

Thresholds may be challenging and disorienting.  They may also lead to portals of transformation and celebration.

There is, by way of obvious example, the age old custom of a bride being carried over the threshold by her beloved. This ritual signifies the crossing into married life.  We also experience threshold moments throughout our lives, as unspoken rites of passage.

A young woman in childbirth crosses the threshold into motherhood.  The journey of life itself in all the myriad stages take us from threshold to threshold.  Infancy to childhood, leading to adolescence and adulthood, carrying on to mid-life and into the elder years until the crossing of the ultimate threshold to the hereafter.  These are natural thresholds unfolding into the fullness of time.

Thresholds are also potent openings to change requiring conscious choice and discernment.  Crossing this particular form of threshold often requires courage.  A move from familiar surroundings to a strange place, the commencement of new work, the response to enter or leave a particular relationship or the call to explore deepening pathways to the Divine, these are moments requiring deep inner listening and discernment. These are moments in a lifetime when it is helpful to gather wisdom and support.  Exploration of the stories of various facets and types of threshold crossings provide inspiration and guidance for a threshold time.

Currently, I’m blessed to be on the threshold of a sacred and unique 12-week online retreat as a co-facilitator  with three wise and creative women, Trish Bruxvoort Colligan, Ronna Detrick, and Christine Valters Paintner.   On August 31st, the next Blue Moon, Women on the Threshold: The Wild Heart of Longing will begin.

Whatever our individual thresholds may be at this moment in life, no matter what may be calling to the deepest places within our hearts and souls, we need companions on the journey.  This need is at the center of our call to collaboration and co-creation of Women on the Threshold.  Each week during this online retreat will feature a new “threshold” story – from Christine, Trish, Ronna and me… of women mystics, from scripture, fairytales, and myths.  Additional offerings include reflections, practices, and questions for reflection.  To enrich the retreat experience we will have small soul-care group phone sessions each week, personally facilitated by one of the retreat facilitators.

Thresholds are mysterious and numinous.  The time we are living in is a threshold time, as we move through the myriad changes that our rapidly growing and ever-changing technological world puts before us.  The invitation for Women on the Threshold is to pause and receive wisdom-laden stories for sustenance and nourishment as bread for the journey.  As we learn from these teaching stories and one another, we will gather wisdom and courage to step assuredly across the thresholds of our lives.