The Gate of the Year
As we step into this first month of the year, I am always reminded of the poem by Minnie Louise Haskins which she called “God Knows.”
And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied:
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”
So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night.
And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.
There is no reason of course why the modern calendar should dictate when our important ‘thresholds’ are, but for many people it can be a useful prompt for a time of reflection and listening to any invitations or disturbances we may be sensing in our lives. I loved, and still remember with fondness and gratitude, the year when one of Richard Rohr’s daily pieces spoke of New Year Resolutions and offered instead essentially these questions:
“ What will I let go of, or put down, to make room for something else in my life?
Having made the room, what might the important something else be?”
This idea of making space, of becoming more available to life, rather than continually picking up more and more things that keep us occupied (particularly the ‘should’s and ‘ought-to’s) can be a radical one. And what better time than a threshold space to make time to sit with these questions.
The more time I spend with people who find themselves at actual thresholds of change in their lives has me realise both the precious gift such a time can be (if we can bear to stop and pause long enough at the threshold to listen with compassion and curiosity) and how rarely these times are used well (or perhaps even consciously acknowledged).
There is a wonderful imaginative contemplation that can be done - gifted to me and now gifted on many times to others - where we actually imagine ourselves standing in the space between what we are leaving and what we are about to enter into. Where we consciously acknowledge all that now stands behind us and, before we step forward into the new (or perhaps the unknown), we open ourselves to all that is present for us, all the experience of life thus far that sits somewhere within us and all that we may be being invited to notice.
We may prayerfully and contemplatively sit with questions such as:
What is God (Love) speaking into me or having me notice at this time?
What might I be being invited to let go of, to put down at this threshold?
What do I most deeply want to bring with me?
What am I most thankful for, even if putting it down?
Is there any part of me that I might be unwittingly leaving behind?
Is there anything else, anything else at all, that Love desires me to know?
It is helpful to allow all that wants to come from a particular question to come (to flow or be released) before moving on to the next.
This exercise of consciously stopping and standing for a while, just exactly where we find ourselves, has been so powerful for me and for others I have accompanied, that I now increasingly ask myself the question:
“What would it be like to prayerfully honour every day in life this way, as a threshold between what has come before and what is yet to come?
What extraordinarily transformational gifts might we be allowing ourselves to be available to?”
Mary Monfries
Mary is a coach and spiritual director who trained with LCSD on the ‘ Encounter’ course. You can find her on the LCSD Directory or Linked-In.