By Betsy Gonwa, 
Our lives are made of big and little moments. Whether learning to walk or to ride a bike, completing an assignment or a household project, buying one’s first house or retiring from a long-term job, some stand out more than others. They are points of entering or beginning and we can identify them, like snapshots in a photo album or the tick marks registering our height on a wall in the house where we grew up. We take note of these thresholds and are aware that we are entering into a new phase of our lives.
The thresholds of our spiritual journeys are not so visible. We can easily miss them, for while hugely significant, we typically don’t notice them until long after we have crossed over them.
They can be so long and drawn out as to seem endless, or as fleeting as a balloon on a string. We may labor through them or pass through them unaware. Whether we experience them as forks in the road or crossroads or dead ends that result in U-turns, each threshold experience becomes a memory telling a hidden story of our spiritual journey.
Some of my own spiritual thresholds include
- my first recollection of paying attention to a physical sensation in my body as my inner spiritual guide – it felt like the pressure of a waterfall in my chest, about to bust the dam
- an instance when, upon receiving a phone call, I stopped pedaling my bike, settled myself under a nearby tree, and listened, offering empathy without solutions or advice
- arriving at a retreat center full of sorrow, and discovering that I was unable to cry — “Because you are managing your sorrow differently this time,” a wise Sister told me
In hindsight, I can identify each of these moments as spiritual thresholds. For I am aware that honoring my body as teacher, empathizing with others, and intentionally caring for myself all come more easily to me now than before.
The Spanish poet, Antonio Machado said, “Anyone who moves forward, even a little, is like Jesus walking on the water.” Wow! What an image! I do believe he has it right. Little shifts open us up to ways of being that we could not have foreseen, and previously considered impossible.
What about you? When you look back, can you identify a threshold that opened you to a new way of being? Or if not, are you aware of a shift that you want to make?
