The Threshold

Today has been the hardest day of my entire life. I have wrestled; I have surrendered and my heart has been deeply broken.

I have experienced Presence and Loss all in one afternoon.

I am numb.

I don't know how to breath, how to hope... how to move forward.

I have found myself in a new, powerless place. I am so afraid of what might be just around the next corner.

In the very middle of this chaotic upheaval I logged onto facebook (looking for anything to distract me and keep me breathing in and out) and I stumbled onto a note that a friend of mine had posted.

My heart started groaning and pounding. My spirit cried out at the obvious leading of Jesus to these words; as if they were written to me, only to me.

So tonight, as I am finally going to bed; facing sleep and whatever comes to me when I am alone and still and reflecting, I am coming back to the words set before me. I am surrendering to this place where I have nothing; where I am so out of control.

And I am letting my breath be my prayer.

Inhale, Jesus...

Exhale, take your rightful place...

"The future is uncertain; in this uncertainty fear usually consumes us as we anxiously await the unknown. It is not a comfortable space to be but comfortable or not it is where we are.

Richard Rohr, author and priest, names this space, “the space of betwixt and between”, as liminal space. Limina is Latin for threshold. “Liminal or sacred space is when you have left the tried and true but have not yet been able to replace it with any thing else and as Rohr states, “it is a space where human beings hate to be but where the biblical God is always leading them. “When Jonah was in the belly of the whale he was in liminal space. When Israel was wandering around in the desert for forty years they were in liminal space. When Joseph was thrown into the pit by his brothers he was in liminal space; a unique spiritual position where one is finally out of the known, out of the way, out of control. It is not a desirable place to be. But amazingly, because we are out of the known, out of control, and out of the way, God can resume God’s rightful place, arouse the winds of the Holy Spirit to blow across our little lives and create something authentically new for us to behold. As believers in God we can take confidence in knowing that this is always a possibility.We...are in liminal space and although it is not a comfortable place to be my prayer is that we can stay there, out of the way, trusting that we are on the threshold of something new that God is doing. May we wait well and be in prayerful discernment with our brothers and sisters about our future."

(Felicia Smith

Graybeal Associate Rector

St. Mary Magdalene Episcopal Church

Boulder, CO)