Get Thee Behind Me!

For generations, people quoted the Bible for non-religious purposes, including the phrase, “Get thee behind me, Satan.”  We all know what it means.

Or do we?

In two days I shall be on my way back to France, as mentioned in my last post.  While all the details are accounted for, down to a roll of toilet paper, there is always a lurking sense of uncertainty.  “What have I forgotten?”  This feeling will only grow until I am actually on my way and there can be no going back.  Why?

Thresholds.

Jesus was crossing a threshold when he rebuked Peter. “Don’t hold me back,” he was saying.  How many of us have hesitated at the threshold, uncertain of what lay ahead.  Better a bird in the hand as they say.

Visible or invisible, thresholds are real.  They tell us we are leaving one place and entering another.  Not for nothing did Greeks and Romans have liminal dieties as they are called.  They marked the the p;hysical threshold between outside and inside, literal crossroads where choices must be made, the places where life and death intersect.

Uncertainty it to be expected at such times.  If I were not uncertain, I would not be doing the spiritual work of pilgrimage.

For the pilgrim, crossing the threshold means ‘putting it behind you’ quite literally.

You leave where and who you are to take hold of where you are going as a pilgrim.  Medieval pilgrims wore a badge to signify their new identity – the scallop shell of Saint James is the most familiar  – but the Via Francigena has one as well which I have sewn onto my hat.

That will be who I am.

Instead of being Fred Wooden the blogger and preacher, I will be Fred Wooden the pilgrim.  Along the path in France I will introduce myself as a ‘pelerin’ when I seek a credentual stamp or arrive at my lodging.  It will forgive my poor French and invite sympathy more than suspicion.

I spoke of invisible thresholds, too, which are not unreal so much as internal.  My older son crossed one many years ago when he told us one morning that he we starting his third year at the same school. Until he began 7th grade he had never been in the same school for more than two years.  That was a threshold for him.  My mother called me when her mother died, saying that even at 55 it felt odd to be an orphan.  That was a threshold for her, and one that I felt when she died.

Most thresholds are like this

They are not visible, but they are real.  A reading from Archibald MacLeish, in the old Unitarian Universalist Hymnal I grew up with, came to mind as I pondered this and my my uncertainty.

“There are many who come to the frontiers between times and did not know them – who looked for the sentry box at the stone bridge, for the barricade in the pines and the declaration in two languages – the warning and opportunity to turn.”

Sometimes we only realize we have crossed a threshold long after we have crossed a threshold.  There was not moment when we say, “get the bhind me.”

A pilgrim is one who wants to recognize thresholds, places in life where we can say, “get thee behind me,” and move on.  Our pilgrim journeys train us to see them coming, and meet the thresholds of life head on.

That’s the theory at least.

Even pilgrims miss some thresholds, though.  That is why we go on more pilgrimages. So off I go once again, to greet each bed as a welcome home for the night and leave the next day, saying “get the behind me,” as I press on.

Note: I may not be able to add to this blog for a time because I will be in the French countryside. However, I may post notes on my facebook page along the way.  You can find me at this address:  https://www.facebook.com/fred.wooden.5