Walk with me...the time has come to cross.

Photo from facebook.
Tweaked image using illustrator and photoshop.
Judith Parsons Art 2016

I was going to write about the ripples that wind and water make upon sand. I was going to ramble on about the way the sand looks like water…However, as I played with the photograph that is trending right now on Facebook…I played with the doorways.

I learned the word: “threshold” from Anita Boyle. She is a Reiki master. She lives her grace and is an incredible energy to behold. She introduced me to John O’Donohue, to his incredible divine writings.

The words below are John O’Donohues. They speak about change and rising to the next floor up. That is how I think of my spiritual quest…THIS is how I live.
I will stop rambling on..and let you walk along the river trail of white sands…I will let you sit upon the sand—and rest, reading these words. When you are finished reading…DO me a favor, please.
I would like you to look at your feet, as you stand upon the white rippled sand, and I would like you to meditate upon what you desire. Take a few minutes to let your highest self tell you…what you deeply desire.
Then slowly let your eyes travel along the sand and look to the horizon. You will see what you want. Before you. Smile, and sigh…breathe that vision in.
That is all, happy reading!!

From To Bless the Space Between Us, John O’Donohue

The beauty of nature insists on taking its time. Everything is prepared. Nothing

is rushed. The rhythm of emergence is a gradual slow beat always inching its way

forward; change remains faithful to itself until the new unfolds in the full confidence of

true arrival. Because nothing is abrupt, the beginning of spring nearly always catches

us unawares. It is there before we see it; and then we can look nowhere without seeing

it.

Change arrives in nature when time has ripened. There are no jagged transitions

or crude discontinuities. This accounts for the sureness with which one season

succeeds another. It is as though they were moving forward in a rhythm set from within

a continuum.

To change is one of the great dreams of every heart – to change the limitations,

the sameness, the banality, or the pain. So often we look back on patterns of behavior,

the kind of decisions we make repeatedly and that have failed to serve us well, and we

aim for a new and more successful path or way of living. But change is difficult for us.

So often we opt to continue the old pattern, rather than risking the danger of difference.

We are also often surprised by change that seems to arrive out of nowhere. We find

ourselves crossing some new threshold we had never anticipated. Like spring secretly

at work within the heart of winter, below the surface of our lives huge changes are in

fermentation. We never suspect a thing. Then when the grip of some long-enduring

winter mentality beings to loosen, we find ourselves vulnerable to a flourish of possibility

and we are suddenly negotiating the challenge of a threshold.

At any time you can ask yourself: At which threshold am I now standing? At this

time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter? What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold? What gift would enable me to do it? A threshold is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms and

atmospheres. 

Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an

experience or a stage of life that it intensifies toward the end into a real frontier that

cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up. At this

threshold a great complexity of emotions comes alive: confusion, fear, excitement,

sadness, hope. This is one of the reasons such vital crossing were always clothed in

ritual. It is wise in your own life to be able to recognize and acknowledge the key

thresholds; to take your time; to feel all the varieties of presence that accrue there; to

listen inward with complete attention until you hear the inner voice calling you forward.

The time has come to cross.

To acknowledge and cross a new threshold is always a challenge. It demands

courage and also a sense of trust in whatever is emerging. This becomes essential

when a threshold opens suddenly in front of you, one for which you had no preparation.

This could be illness, suffering or loss. Because we are so engaged with the world, we

usually forget how fragile life can be and how vulnerable we always are. It takes only a

couple of seconds for a life to change irreversibly. Suddenly you stand on completely

strange ground and a new course of life has to be embraced. Especially at such times

we desperately need blessing and protection. You look back at the life you have lived

up to a few hours before, and it suddenly seems so far away. Think for a moment how,

across the world, someone’s life has just changed – irrevocably, permanently, and not

necessarily for the better – and everything that was once so steady, so reliable, must

now find a new way of unfolding.

Though we know one another’s names and recognize one another’s faces, we

never know what destiny shapes each life. The script of individual destiny is secret; it is

hidden behind and beneath the sequence of happenings that is continually unfolding for

us. Each life is a mystery that is never finally available to the mind’s light or questions.

That we are here is a huge affirmation; somehow life needed us and wanted us to be.

To sense and trust this primeval acceptance can open a vast spring of trust within the

heart. It can free us into a natural courage that casts out fear and opens up our lives to

become voyages of discovery, creativity, and compassion. No threshold need be a

threat, but rather an invitation and a promise. Whatever comes, the great sacrament of

life will remain faithful to us, blessing us always with visible signs of invisible grace. We

merely need to trust.