It’s difficult for most of us to be in the “in between” spaces of life…for example, in between jobs, in between childhood and adulthood, or—in my case—in between being a single person and a professed monastic sister. We know that the threshold between one way of being and other is a sacred space, and yet our tendency is to either long for the past, when we knew what was what, or ease our anxiety by speculating about what the future will bring. However, as Christine Valtner Painter notes, “The threshold isn’t about figuring things out. The threshold is about resting into mystery, into unknowing, into the liminal space where the old is released but the new hasn’t come into being yet.”
It occurs to me that life is one big threshold at the
doorway to death. If that is the case, life is not meant for figuring things
out but for resting into mystery, into unknowing. If we believe that God is
present with us each moment of our lives, as shown through the incarnation of
God in Jesus and the indwelling of God as Holy Spirit, then we don’t need to long
for the past or anticipate the future, because God is here with us now. What
can possibly be better than that?
As we are reminded in Ecclesiastes 8:8, “…none has mastery
of the day of death.” However, if we are well practiced in resting into mystery
and unknowing, we will be ready whenever we are called to cross over the
threshold of the doorway to death. Although eye has not seen what God has ready
for us there, we do know that, as here on earth, we will continue to reside in
the presence of our merciful, loving, and mysterious God.
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