Threshold

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, beginning 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, just seven years shy of the time spent living in my first home. My parents still live in their 'starter house.' Nick and I wouldn't mind our roots going down deep like that for our family 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 space. 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 leisurely 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, open, 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, living in community) to the next (homeowners, parents, settling into 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 bodies, 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 via 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 tarry into Eastertide and ordinary time. And I trust God to know what I need next if I'm to move into something else this year. . .

So, I breathe out a final hallelujah! before Ash Wednesday, praising God in this lingering at the border, at the arriving of Lent.

Photo by Colin Watts on Unsplash

The Waiting is Also the Gift

 

This is a poem that I can't write yet,

I find that I don't know this truth—

I only know that it rings true

with all its resonance inside of me

All I know now is the melancholy

of holy waiting—the ache of longing...

Longing to belong to someone,

someone who is mine like no one else

I want to ring all the bells

inside someone else's soul—

to give them my soul and body

for always. I want them to stay...

My biggest fear is that someone

would know me—all of me—

and then leave, taking my soul

and breaking my heart to death

Will I ever learn that

the waiting is also the gift

Or will I simply feel

like it is always the hardest part?

Will I ever get to fully give

someone else my open heart

and have them care for it? Will they stay

when who I am should scare them away?

If waiting is all there is

Lord, help me to know it as gift.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

I wrote this in March 2022. Though quite a few things have shifted in my life since then, I still feel like this is a poem I can't write yet.  —JB

November

Dear Aaron,

It is Thanksgiving today. My family is gathered around their table, spilling over from its limited space. Your family and our friends are gathered around the table in your house. Your sister and her family are gathered at a southern table. I am at my cabin this Thanksgiving, watching snow drip from the eaves, listening to the crows cry out in the cold. And you? You are banqueting with the King of kings. Where you are, every moment is Thanksgiving. Would that we all lived in that state!

Yet...we don't. So when the crows cry, I want to cry with them. When a Switchfoot song plays unexpectedly in a film, all I can think about is you. It doesn't hurt me, exactly, I love thinking about you—but the separation, before your death and even more by your death—that hurts like hell. Oddly, it isn't Hell that separates us now but Heaven. How can this be?

Oh friend, I miss you. . .

Unless I Die...

Unless a kernel of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone. 

But, if it dies, it will bear much fruit. 

—Jesus

A darkening sky greets the great eye

blinking open its shutter to morn—

o'erhead, coarse comes a rook's cry,

from here dreams appear bleak and forlorn

Here, in my cramped, close cell I hear

the neighbour dog howl a lament—

the dirt and the dark I fear,

they close in and my choice I repent

Buried, buried unseen and deep,

with the dog next door I mourn—

my eyes, dreamless now, can only weep,

trapped in the earth like a kernel of corn

How long must I suffocate,

freedom denied, in this dank tomb?

Life with death I conflate,

Later to find my prison mould a womb

The waiting feels empty and long,

but the Gardener waters the earth

about me, and o'er me raises His song,

stirring my spirit, breathing rebirth 

The confines feeling so like death

are the only means of shedding the husk

of flesh strangling my dreams, my breath,

clouding my eyes by dusk

White rhizome rises, unfurling green,

fresh air floods my chamber, tight,

in my heart awakens a dream

after my soul's dark night.

Joy, joy, joy!

Somehow it is December, week three. Does it ever seem like you are waiting for it to feel like Christmas? Do you feel wrapped up in work or events or gift-buying, rather than reflective stillness? Do you go through the motions, sing the songs, yet feel far away from the Christ-child? Are you expecting your favourite Christmas records, films, or traditions to make things feel normal or happy?

Traditions—be they family originals or many-centuries long—sometimes lose the breath of life. Liturgy becomes legalism when the Spirit's spark is extinguished and sanctification depends on human effort. So it is with Christmas. The very celebration of Jesus coming near makes Him seem far away. The very events and customs that result from the gladness of Christ's arrival are hollow on their own. Sometimes we must lay aside every tradition and expectation. We must come to Jesus alone.

Expectations kill. If human relationships have taught me anything this last year, it is this. Expectations kill enjoyment when things don't go as planned, even though they go well. Expectations kill relationships when they go unspoken, and so unmet. Expectations rob us of the delight of unexpected gifts. Expectations set us up for disappointment—even in excellent things—when they are not fulfilled.

So, if you were expecting it to feel like Christmas this third week of December and it doesn't, stop. Stop expecting Christmas to feel a certain way. Stop playing that Bing Crosby record hoping to make yourself feel in the mood for Christmas. Stop stressing about gifts you haven't purchased, the packing you have yet to do, the mound of work waiting on your desk before Christmas break. Stop.

Stop, because it is still Advent, the season of waiting. Stop and breathe. Exhale thanks, inhale joy. This third week of Advent churches and families around the world light the joy candle. Joy. In this season of stress and rushing when do we have time for joy? In this world of uncertainties, arguments, abandonment, and terror that pushes people from their homeland, where is joy? In this bleak blackness of night's final watch, it is colder and darker than ever.

The first week of Advent, sunset hour, we may have had the hope associated with those first seven days. There was still a rosy glow on the Western horizon. We may have had refreshing moments of the peace of week two, like nightly repose. But week three is that fitful, wakeful hour when all is darkness, no streak of dawn appears to relieve us. And this—this is when we are supposed to have joy? Yes, joy in the dark. Joy is not happiness or painting a smile over sorrow. Joy, chara, rests itself in the middle of thanksgiving, eucharisteo. In the bleakness we give thanks. In the blackness we take joy that the waiting is not endless.

When we lay aside our expectations, we begin to see the gifts God wants to give. Israel wanted a warrior-king. God gave them a baby. Even when the babe grew into a man, He was not a rebel, though He was revolutionary. He was fierce and gentle. He was just and meek. And He was killed, not freeing Israel from their oppression one bit. What kind of “gift” was that? 

If the Jews had had eyes to see, had laid their expectations on the altar, they would have found that their freedom did not need to be external. They needed internal freedom from a law that had become legalism. They needed hearts of flesh in place of stone. When God became man, He set before every human being the gift of freedom from the curse. This gift was world-wide and history-long—much bigger than the Jews had ever dreamed.

We, too, find our unmet expectations so exceeded by God's gifts that we often fail to recognise that they are gifts. How can we see something vast with eyes so small? We must learn to see. That is what we learn in this third week of Advent, we learn to see joy lurking—leaping—in and out of corners of our lives.

We learn to see both the small and the obvious good things—and our response is thanks to God. It is in those moments that our eyes are able to see the big picture a little better. Our expectations crumble, our feelings are changed, made new. When we ask God to help us know joy and receive His gifts, whatever form they take, we are made new. When we give thanks we know joy as an intimate friend. This gift of God we’ll cherish well, that ever joy our hearts shall fill. Joy, joy, joy! Praise we the Lord in heav’n on high!

The Waiting is Not Wasted

Waiting. We do a lot of waiting at this time of year. We queue up to buy gifts—and to mail them. We wait for Amazon orders to arrive in the post. We wait in airports, traffic, and coffee shops. We wait for Christmas break to wrest us from our studies, our work, our loneliness. Sometimes we wait at a tremendous pace, as if filling our days with work or parties or consumer pursuits will make time gain speed.

Waiting...Israel was waiting for a Messiah in the days of Caesar Augustus. Waiting for a Deliverer, like in Egypt long ago. Israel was waiting for freedom. In those same days, a woman named Elisabeth was waiting to deliver her first child, though she was old and infertile. A young, unmarried girl was also waiting quietly and patiently. She was awaiting the promise given to her by an angel of God. Waiting to see what her belovéd would do when she told him she was pregnant. A virgin giving birth to a child, it sounded like a silly sham, a cover up for fornication. Yet the prophecy was there in Isaiah, "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name [Emmanuel]."1 There they were—Elisabeth, Mary, and all of Israel—waiting.

Nine months of waiting brought forth John. The same length of gestation wrought the King of all creation into a creature Himself. Then came the patient, silent years of growing—like a seed underground, waiting to break into the sunlight. After thirty years of quiet growth, John paved the way for his kinsman, Jesus, and for three years all of Israel waited to see what would become of Mary's son. You know the rest, He was killed and His disciples waited three days in fear of the Romans, in fear of the Jews, in fear that all their hopes had been placed in the wrong man. But their hope was fulfilled. The anticipation was exceeded. The waiting dawned in resurrection.

Awaiting the arrival of the Messiah is what the season of Advent is all about. We have stepped into that waiting period. The fasting before the feasting. The season of darkness is upon us, like it was upon Israel.

In preparation for celebrating the arrival of the Messiah, I began to think about the advent seasons we go through in life at times. Sometimes they are long, unyielding periods. The darkness is thick, we see no light of hope at the end of the tunnel. The Messiah seems far away. We cry out, "How long, O Lord? How long?" with seemingly no answer. Israel sat in crushing darkness, hope draining out of her that the long awaited Messiah would ever come. Nearly all Israel had no inkling that the dark night of their fallen existence—and the agony of waiting—was about to end in dawn. Often we do not sense that the approach—the Advent—of God is near at hand, either. But the truth is that: 

"Because of God’s tender mercy,the morning light from heaven is about to break upon us,to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,and to guide us to the path of peace."2

The light at the end of the tunnel may not come in the form we would like, or hope for, or expect. Jesus did not come as a mighty warrior, He entered Israel as a fragile baby. He did not enter Jerusalem in triumph, riding a white charger, He rode in on a humble donkey colt. So, too, our hope may be realised in ways we didn't foresee: in an encouraging friend walking alongside us through the daily grind; in having a good job—when we didn't expect we would have to be the sole provider for our family; in the welcoming embrace of our parents—rather than a lover; in strength for this day, when we thought we were depleted yesterday. Hope is sometimes realised in a change of heart, change of mind, change of plans that looks like a faithful friend. The dawn comes in shades of colour we never anticipated, sometimes after we have given up looking for the light. The daystar rises at the right time—even when it seems late—because of God's tender mercy, because of His kindness.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend [understand or overcome] it."3

Whether you are waiting in line or waiting for something in your life to change, let the longing to be finished with waiting remind you that you are being cultivated. Like a seed underground, like John the Baptist and Jesus in the decades before their life's work began—the waiting produces patience and strength of character. The waiting gives you roots so that you may also grow upward and produce fruit. The waiting is not wasted, it ends in the dawn of resurrection.

_________

1. Isaiah 7:14 (ESV)

2. Luke 1:78-79 (NLT)

3. John 1:1, 4-5 (NKJV)

Lent Week 4: Waiting to Rejoice

Laetare: O Rejoice!

(Lent week four)

Here I am—

Waiting for God,

Not quite ready

For rejoicing yet;

The shadows flicker,

Darkening my soul,

Still waiting for

The rising sun

This dark night

—Not wholly black—

Sprinkled with stars

Streaming on me

Slight grey light,

Promises coming Hope,

As I wait

Here for God

I am awaiting

With great expectation

The rising Son

—Myth made real—

The glimmering sky

Bursting fully alive

With glory's Hope...

...But not yet

As I wait

Sin's darkness lingers;

Its clammy fingers

Poking my soul

Make me squirm,

Reminding me that

Redemption is now...

...And not yet

I hold back,

Waiting for God

To take centre-stage

In the drama

Unfolding, riveting me

To wait here

In shadow, before

The Son rises...