Dear Friends,
Time is short.
Our time, in particular, is short. Here as we approach the final days of Lent, this season that puts us in particular touch with our mortality, following on the lectionary story about the raising of Lazarus, we recall that time is short. And, of course, with this Sunday marked as the Sunday of the Passion, we know that Jesus’s time is short, too. He is about enter into the last days with his disciples, preparing them for his departure and what their work will be when he is gone.
Time is short.
It’s a worrisome thing for many of us, the brevity of life, the countless things to be done. But when I hear that phrase, I cannot help but think first and only of Henri-Frederic Amiel’s words that are so often used as a dismissal in the Episcopal Church –
“Life is short, and we do not have too much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us. So be swift to love. Make haste to be kind…”
This dismissal was the text of choice for much of the time I lived in Atlanta years ago, a period in my life that was particularly challenging, but which also set me on my current path, spiritually and professionally. So when I hear the words, “life is short,” my brain fills in the rest – get to it! To the good works! To the love! The joy! The companionship!
Life Is Short
(cn: death)
And it’s also unpredictable. As I sit here writing, I flipped over to another window – I often save things I want to link here on my Facebook or Twitter accounts. But instead of making it to my Saved folder, I instead find myself struggling to catch my breath. Instead of opening that window, I scrolled down only to see a remembrance, a condolence.
I have kept few people from high school in my life. In fact, I mostly try to. forget those years, and those I remain in touch with are mostly distant. I invited one single person from my high school to my wedding. But now another member of my immediate circle is dead. My brain is washed over in puzzled grief. I am 33 and have been adding new members to the dead friends club at too swift a rate. May you rest in peace, and rise in glory, friend. You have crossed a threshold.
It was my intention to write about thresholds this week even before I received this news. Thresholds, after all, are important in Godly Play, as we help children cross into a sacred space set just for them. And, when we’ve been together in the last six months or so, Godly Play folks have been particularly tuned to thresholds. The pandemic has positioned us to contend with thresholds more often, in attempts to return, in preparedness before simple tasks.
Thresholds are more than doorways or divisions. A threshold, as John O’Donohue writes in his wonderful collection of prayers “To Bless the Space Between Us,” “…is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms, and atmospheres. Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience or a stage of life that it intensifies toward the end into a real frontier that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up.”
In my Atlanta days, “To Bless the Space Between Us” commonly appeared in my Education for Ministry room as we gathered and departed on Tuesday nights. We honored an abundance of thresholds, including the ones that are within us, rather than between us, as Jessica Winter writes about in this article from 2018. There are thresholds within us where we find ourselves suspended, unable to cross. These spaces can be far more challenging than external ones that we can visualize. How do we step into the deep unknowns of our selves?
Into Jerusalem
This week, we prepare ourselves for Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem. This is most certainly a threshold, particularly for Jesus, who knows what is coming. The people thought a king was coming – and a king WAS coming. He just wasn’t the kind of King anyone expected. This king did not have an army or a great horse. This king rode on a donkey, and it wasn’t even his.
This king was preparing for death. Death, which is also a threshold.
My heart is standing frozen on a threshold as I write. It can go no further. Somewhere amidst my boxes of belongings, there is a traveling journal filled with memories from my first year of college, mailed each month between myself, my now-dead-friend, and a third member of what was once a small, inseparable unit. Time has pressed on – almost 15 years – and we dispersed. We entered into new phases and moments, crossing countless thresholds. But this is what has been revealed: some part of me was still standing on the other side, in the old. And that’s okay.
We can’t cross thresholds until we are ready. In Godly Play, the door person does important work by sitting at the threshold. And they stay there. They wait with the children who aren’t ready to make that shift. And so, while I entered this note thinking about thresholds, I have a new question, a wondering for myself and for you:
Who are the door people in your life?
Who waits at the threshold for and with you?
Jesus could be his own door person, in a sense. Through God’s three-in-one nature, Jesus could ask God to take this cup from him and also know that God was with him and that this was not the end. Sometimes we can do that for ourselves, especially in the small things. Many of us have therapists who are our door people, and partners or spouses also stand in this role. Certainly, parents and caregivers are amongst the most important door people for children (and I wonder how thinking about yourself in that way might change things for you?!). But different circumstances need different door people. And knowing we need a door person means we need to recognize a threshold first and ask someone into that space.
Unsurprisingly, I have been known to write myself across thresholds. It’s how I think and come close to the things I feel. And so, in reading this, I thank you for sitting outside the door with me. I’m ready for Holy Week, which we fill with ritual that helps us navigate the threshold of Jesus’s death and resurrection.
The Church knows how to be a door person, as it were. Ritual holds the curtain back, but does not hurry us through. We still have a moment before it is time. Go at your own pace.
Peace,
Bird