Crossing the Threshold in 2020

A threshold is defined as the “the magnitude or intensity that must be exceeded for a certain reaction, phenomenon, result, or condition to occur or be manifested.”

In 2016, when I first published my poem “Love at the Threshold” on Women For One, I had no idea that four years later it would become the title of my first book.

The intensity of pain that I was experiencing when I first published that poem left me with no other choice than to lay my marriage down to rest and venture into the Great Unknown.

It was then that I began to navigate what in spiritual terms is often referred to as liminal space, the time between “what was” and “what is next.”

Author and theologian Richard Rohr refers to the threshold as “God’s waiting room. Here we are taught openness and patience as we come to expect an appointment with the Divine Doctor.”

Patience has not necessarily been a virtue of mine. For the most part, I journeyed through liminality like a small child in the back of her parents’ car screaming, “Are we there yet?”

Liminal space was a time of deep contemplation, interspersed with confusion, chaos, and a battle in discerning fantasy from reality. It was a time in which I learned that in order for me to come together in the ways in which God imagined, required me to fall apart.

Needless to say, crossing the threshold into liminal space is not for the faint of heart. During this time period between my poem being published on Women For One and this book being birthed, I can’t even tell you how many times I fell victim to my ego’s yearning to just be on the other side already.

Luckily, with help from the Divine Doctor, some wise elders, and good friends, I’ve learned to slow my step, enjoy the feeling of having two feet on the ground, and trust that God’s timing is far better than mine.

When I reflect on the confluence of factors that have brought me to the threshold of birthing this book in 2020, I am reminded that the formation of it was shaped by both internal and social forces.

Love at the Threshold will leave the safety inside the womb of creativity and be born into a world that is currently polarized by the dualities of “left” and “right” and where telling the truth seems to be lost among those who hold positions of power.

While my book is not overtly political in nature, I cannot separate it from the landscape in which it was written. While the activist in me has felt dragged in a million directions over the years, I have realized that the most revolutionary act in times of division is to remember that you are a whole.

So I prepare to cross another threshold, one in which I share some pretty raw and revealing truth with the world at large.

While I didn’t write this book with the reader in mind, I hope that as you bear witness to my journey, you find the courage to cross your own threshold (whatever that may be), the faith to live the questions, and the trust to know that in your deepest wound lives your deepest wisdom.

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If you find yourself at a threshold in life and desire a deep yet lighthearted and humorous companion for the journey, check out my website for a list of current offerings.

Love at the Threshold: Moments, Musings, & Revelations of an Unexpected Mystic is now available on Amazon. Get your copy here!