Threshold: The figurative use was in Old English, "border or beginning of a region or place;" + Hold, the Germanic verb "generally accepted" [OED 1989] to have meant originally "to keep, tend, watch over." (Etymonline.com)
Lent is arriving—my favourite season of the Church calendar, starting in the chilly darkness of late Winter. Arriving is often a word I consider more around Advent, but this year it feels very fitting for Lent. Many things are expected to arrive in this Lenten season... We're packing items, ever-so-slowly emptying our cabin, preparing to exit 'the village' as it is lovingly known. This place has been my home for nearly seventeen years, seven years shy of my growing up homeplace living. My parents still live in their 'starter house', and Nick and I wouldn't mind our roots going deep like that for our family as well in our first home.
As we pack and transport various items, my ever-burgeoning womb reminds me that I'm in more than one liminal place. Moving toward arrival, but not there yet. It is unsettling to live at the threshold of a season or space, it is uncomfortable as even the familiar becomes unfamiliar. If I'm not choosing presence in the liminal it can be disorienting—but if I offer my attention to the discomfort something shifts. I find this a time of slowly saying goodbye to one season and place and gently entering into another. It is less abrupt than a long-weekend move or the (relatively) few hours of labour before baby arrives. The shift is happening in slow motion. Sometimes it's frustratingly slow and other times I remember to be grateful for this pace.
Thinking of this slow transition, I am met with an image. In my mind's eye I see a stone house with a weathered threshold at the kitchen door (the real entry point of a home)—from outside to inside. It is one step, but we feel the difference of out-of-doors to indoors keenly. When we step out, the world becomes brighter, deeper, bigger and we shrink down to size. When we step in, we are welcomed into warmth, beauty, safety, and cosiness. The threshold is a brief space, not a lingering place. It is that fascinating "liminal" space in a building or home. We are lingering at the threshold, the border, from one place to the next—from one season (renters, newlywed couple, community) to the next (homeowners, parents, a neighbourhood where we've yet to meet anyone).
The word 'threshold' also conveys the idea of tending, keeping, and watching over. We are caretakers of our time home, yard, child, and to some degree, our neighbours. We are to tend time and toils, skills and souls. We keep watch in the night in prayer. And we remember Who it is who cares for us, tending our souls, feeding our selves. Sometimes He offers me a word for the year, and often it shifts over the dance of the days. For this season of Lent I believe the Lord is offering me the words 'liminal' and 'threshold'—we'll see if they linger into Eastertide and ordinary time. But I trust God to know what I need next if I'm to move into something else this year, too.
So I breathe out a final hallelujah—amen! before Ash Wednesday, praising God in this lingering at the border, at the arriving of Lent.
Photo by Colin Watts on Unsplash
