1. the sill of a doorway.
2. the entrance to a house or building.
3. any place or point of entering or beginning:
the threshold of a new career.
4. Also called limen. Psychology, Physiology. the point at which a stimulus is of sufficient intensity to begin to produce an effect:
the threshold of consciousness; a low threshold of pain.
A liminal space is the space between the now and the not yet.
I now own a threshold, several actually. And quite a few of them need some work.
This has been a threshold year for me and for our family in a lot of ways. We’ve faced a lot of changes and there are more to come. We’ve made some big decisions and I get the feeling we may not be done with them yet. We seem to be in a threshold season.
For most of my life my next steps have been quite clear. Even when they were entirely unanticipated. “Hey, you should come work for our theater company.” Or getting accepted into a collegiate film studies program in Los Angeles, which led to working in Hollywood. A few years later, moving cross-country from LA to New York. Then there was the season of leaving the security of full-time employment to spend a few years writing and speaking.
It’s never been difficult for me to figure out the difference between a door and a window and I’ve been blessed with many of each. I’ve been blessed with a variety of insane and amazing opportunities over the years. Every one of them a threshold waiting for one courageous step.
For me, the unfolding has always been clear. That isn’t to say I knew everything, far from it. Faith is to acknowledge that we rarely see where we are headed. All too often we barely only know the next step to take or we barely know which direction to take it in. One cannot get to “the land that I will show you” without relying on the One showing. One can, however, sense and trust the unfolding. It’s a threshold thing.
So I have taken my steps in faith into the unknown. You should see my new basement. Unknown is what hides beyond the plywood walls… Every time, though, I have known and found security and safety. Even in the West Hollywood apartment where the lullabies came from the police cars that loved our neighborhood so much.
There’s always been a job ahead, a thing to go to, some might say “a clear calling.” So many of those experiences for me meant that obedience was one foot in front of the other along a trajectory that I basically knew.
Now, on a few levels, I am standing at the edge of my own cloud of unknowing. There is something of a fog over the future. I can relate in ways that I never have before to this idea of “a land that I will show you.” This particular threshold is different. I don’t fully know what I mean by that, which may be why it’s different.
It’s not as if I am standing before a particular door or window, it’s as if I’m standing on the edge of an entire frontier. Like Abraham and Lot, there are choices, options, possibilities. I don’t believe that any of them are inherently right or wrong, I know from experience that you can do any opportunity right or you can do it wrong. Most of the time, it’s what we do with the moments, it’s how we navigate the choices that determine the results or consequences. Maybe it’s just me.
I think we walk past manna all the time and for whatever reason we don’t pick it up. Maybe we’d rather meet our needs ourselves. After all, if we can do it why do we need faith? Or, I think we horde it and it goes bad on us eventually. Rarely, and I live and work in ministry, do we take what we need and trust it for this day. Manna is a threshold resource. It’s a threshold opportunity. Today, trust today and tomorrow we can trust tomorrow.
It’s threshold time for a lot of us, I think. High school graduates. College graduates. So many spring/early summer marriages. I seem to be a newly adopted grandfather because our friends just had a beautiful baby boy and they call me “Abuelito.” It makes me happy because he’s amazing and beautiful and I’m hoping to get some empanadas out of the deal. In my denomination, a lot of people are moving to new places next month. It’s a threshold season for them, their families and both congregations. Or they just moved last year and with one year behind them, they’re finally not doing everything for the very first time. Or they may move next year and they want to give their best and finish well. There are thresholds everywhere.
I have a lot of work ahead of me. This house is great and there is work to be done. We will be up late, working hard, operating power tools that I am not intellectually qualified to handle responsibly and making big decisions and big purchases. We will be living on a shoestring and making it all work, trusting in what we are given today for today. We will be learning new rhythms and trying new things. Thresholds are great, but they aren’t easy. Nor do I want it that way.
It’s worth the effort, the sweat, the time, the love, the making it work, the confusion and doubt, the trust, the hopes and the dreams. It’s worth all of it. Because a threshold is an entry point, it’s a beginning, it’s the space between the now and the not yet. And it is always, every single time, without doubt, incontestably, a blessing.
2 Comments
Good read this am, have a few old words I’ll send you on limen I wrote
Nice insight, Chris.