Anam Cara

3 Thresholds

Within the grip of winter, it is almost impossible to imagine the spring. The gray perished landscape is shorn of color. Only bleakness meets the eye; everything seems severe and edged. Winter is the oldest season; it has some quality of the absolute. Yet beneath the surface of winter, the miracle of spring is already in preparation; the cold is relenting; seeds are wakening up. Colors are beginning to imagine how they will return. Then, imperceptibly, somewhere one bud opens and the symphony of renewal is no longer reversible. From the black heart of winter a miraculous, breathing plenitude of color emerges.

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 begins 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 emotion comes alive: confusion, fear, excitement, sadness, hope. This is one of the reasons such vital crossings 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. FOR YOUR BIRTHDAY

Blessed be the mind that dreamed the day

The blueprint of your life

Would begin to glow on earth,

Illuminating all the faces and voices

That would arrive to invite

Your soul to growth.

Praised be your father and mother,

Who loved you before you were,

And trusted to call you here

With no idea who you would be.

Blessed be those who have loved you

Into becoming who you were meant to be,

Blessed be those who have crossed your life

With dark gifts of hurt and loss

That have helped to school your mind

In the art of disappointment.

When desolation surrounded you,

Blessed be those who looked for you

And found you, their kind hands

Urgent to open a blue window

In the gray wall formed around you.

Blessed be the gifts you never notice,

Your health, eyes to behold the world,

Thoughts to countenance the unknown,

Memory to harvest vanished days,

Your heart to feel the world’s waves,

Your breath to breathe the nourishment

Of distance made intimate by earth.

On this echoing-day of your birth,

May you open the gift of solitude

In order to receive your soul;

Enter the generosity of silence

To hear your hidden heart;

Know the serenity of stillness

To be enfolded anew

By the miracle of your being.

FOR THE TRAVELER

Every time you leave home,

Another road takes you

Into a world you were never in.

New strangers on other paths await.

New places that have never seen you

Will startle a little at your entry.

Old places that know you well

Will pretend nothing

Changed since your last visit.

When you travel, you find yourself

Alone in a different way,

More attentive now

To the self you bring along,

Your more subtle eye watching

You abroad; and how what meets you

Touches that part of the heart

That lies low at home:

How you unexpectedly attune

To the timbre in some voice,

Opening a conversation

You want to take in

To where your longing

Has pressed hard enough

Inward, on some unsaid dark,

To create a crystal of insight

You could not have known

You needed

To illuminate

Your way.

When you travel,

A new silence

Goes with you,

And if you listen,

You will hear

What your heart would

Love to say.

A journey can become a sacred thing:

Make sure, before you go,

To take the time

To bless your going forth,

To free your heart of ballast

So that the compass of your soul

Might direct you toward

The territories of spirit

Where you will discover

More of your hidden life,

And the urgencies

That deserve to claim you.

May you travel in an awakened way,

Gathered wisely into your inner ground;

That you may not waste the invitations

Which wait along the way to transform you.

May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,

And live your time away to its fullest;

Return home more enriched, and free

To balance the gift of days which call you.

FOR A MOTHER-TO-BE

Nothing could have prepared

Your heart to open like this.

From beyond the skies and the stars

This echo arrived inside you

And started to pulse with life,

Each beat a tiny act of growth,

Traversing all our ancient shapes

On its way home to itself.

Once it began, you were no longer your own.

A new, more courageous you, offering itself

In a new way to a presence you can sense

But you have not seen or known.

It has made you feel alone

In a way you never knew before;

Everyone else sees only from the outside

What you feel and feed

With every fiber of your being.

Never have you traveled farther inward

Where words and thoughts become half-light

Unable to reach the fund of brightness

Strengthening inside the night of your womb.

Like some primeval moon,

Your soul brightens

The tides of essence

That flow to your child.

You know your life has changed forever,

For in all the days and years to come,

Distance will never be able to cut you off

From the one you now carry

For nine months under your heart.

May you be blessed with quiet confidence

That destiny will guide you and mind you.

May the emerging spirit of your child

Imbibe encouragement and joy

From the continuous music of your heart,

So that it can grow with ease,

Expectant of wonder and welcome

When its form is fully filled

And it makes its journey out

To see you and settle at last

Relieved, and glad in your arms.

FOR A NEW FATHER

As the shimmer of dawn transforms the night

Into a blush of color futured with delight,

The eyes of your new child awaken in you

A brightness that surprises your life.

Since the first stir of its secret becoming,

The echo of your child has lived inside you,

Strengthening through all its night of forming

Into a sure pulse of fostering music.

How quietly and gently that embryo-echo

Can womb in the bone of a man

And foster across the distance to the mother

A shadow-shelter around this fragile voyage.

Now as you behold your infant, you know

That this child has come from you and to you;

You feel the full force of a father’s desire

To protect and shelter.

Perhaps for the first time,

There awakens in you

A sense of your own mortality.

May your heart rest in the grace of the gift

And you sense how you have been called

Inside the dream of this new destiny.

May you be gentle and loving,

Clear and sure.

May you trust in the unseen providence

That has chosen you all to be a family.

May you stand sure on your ground

And know that every grace you need

Will unfold before you

Like all the mornings of your life.

FOR A FRIEND ON THE ARRIVAL OF ILLNESS

Now is the time of dark invitation

Beyond a frontier you did not expect;

Abruptly, your old life seems distant.

You barely noticed how each day opened

A path through fields never questioned,

Yet expected, deep down, to hold treasure.

Now your time on earth becomes full of threat;

Before your eyes your future shrinks.

You lived absorbed in the day-to-day,

So continuous with everything around you,

That you could forget you were separate;

Now this dark companion has come between you.

Distances have opened in your eyes.

You feel that against your will

A stranger has married your heart.

Nothing before has made you

Feel so isolated and lost.

When the reverberations of shock subside in you,

May grace come to restore you to balance.

May it shape a new space in your heart

To embrace this illness as a teacher

Who has come to open your life to new worlds.

May you find in yourself

A courageous hospitality

Toward what is difficult,

Painful, and unknown.

May you learn to use this illness

As a lantern to illuminate

The new qualities that will emerge in you.

May the fragile harvesting of this slow light

Help to release whatever has become false in you.

May you trust this light to clear a path

Through all the fog of old unease and anxiety

Until you feel arising within you a tranquillity

Profound enough to call the storm to stillness.

May you find the wisdom to listen to your illness:

Ask it why it came. Why it chose your friendship.

Where it wants to take you. What it wants you to know.

What quality of space it wants to create in you.

What you need to learn to become more fully yourself

That your presence may shine in the world.

May you keep faith with your body,

Learning to see it as a holy sanctuary

Which can bring this night-wound gradually

Toward the healing and freedom of dawn.

May you be granted the courage and vision

To work through passivity and self-pity,

To see the beauty you can harvest

From the riches of this dark invitation.

May you learn to receive it graciously,

And promise to learn swiftly

That it may leave you newborn,

Willing to dedicate your time to birth.

AT THE THRESHOLD OF WOMANHOOD

It is like awakening into a morning

Where everything is touched with change.

Now your body has a mind of its own

As it curves and fills into womanhood.

The lightness of being a girl is leaving,

And your thoughts too are taking you

To places you have never known before.

Becoming a woman, you feel the moon

Tug at your blood, and you begin to sense

The mysteries of your new body.

May you enter beautifully into the feminine,

Learning to trust the world of feeling you inherit,

Finding ease and elegance in all you are.

May your respect for your beauty

Become visible in your dignity

And how you hold yourself in the world.

May the expectation in other eyes

Never decide how you are to be;

Learn to trust the advice of your heart.

May you feel life as an irresistible invitation

To discover and develop your talents,

Each day bringing something new to birth.

May you be wise in choosing love;

When you trust, give all your heart

And allow love to pervade you like breath.

May you have friends who can see you.

May your senses be windows of wonder

And your mind a prism of spirit.

AT THE THRESHOLD OF MANHOOD

As you leave the blurred wood

You entered while still a boy,

And light clarifies around

Your emerging, manly form,

May you discover gradually

A natural confidence in your body.

May your new strength be graceful

As you learn to carry yourself

With a dignity that is sure,

Bringing your gestures and expression

Into an easy harmony and rhythm.

May you never feel the need

To be coarse, or force yourself;

Rather, may you receive your manhood

With grace and mindful ease;

Then, at one with your own elegance,

Your presence will claim its radiance.

May you awaken confidently

To the feminine within you,

And learn to integrate the beauty

Of intuition and feeling

So that your sensitivity kindles

And your heart is trusted.

That you may slowly grow

To trust the silence of the masculine

As the home of your stillness.

Though it will be always difficult

To find the words for what you feel,

May you find ease in that awkwardness

Until gradually from beneath

The gravel of stuttered sounds

The pure flow of you emerges.

Be gentle with yourself,

Learn to integrate the negative,

Harnessing its force

To cross the boundaries

That would confine you.

Love the life of your mind,

Furnishing it ever with new thought

So that your countenance glows

With the joy of being alive.

Be vigilant

And true to an inner honor

That will not allow

Anger or resentment

To make you captive.

Always have the courage

To change, welcoming those voices

That call you beyond yourself.

Beyond your work and action,

Remain faithful to your heart,

For you to deepen and grow

Into a man of dignity and nobility.

FOR THE PARENTS OF ONE WHO HAS COMMITTED A CRIME

No one else can see beauty

In his darkened life now.

His image has closed

Like a shadow.

When people look at him,

He has become the mirror

Of the damage he has done.

But he is yours;

And you have different eyes

That hold his yesterdays

In pictures no one else remembers:

Waiting for him to be born,

Not knowing who he would be,

The moments of his childhood,

First steps, first words,

Smiles and cries,

And all the big thresholds

Of his journey since…

He is yours in a way

No words could ever tell;

And you can see through

The stranger this deed has made him

And still find the countenance of your son.

Despite all the disappointment and shame,

May you find in your belonging with him

A kind place, where your spirit will find rest.

May new words come alive between you

To build small bridges of understanding.

May that serenity lead you beyond guilt and blame

To find that bright field of the heart

Where he can come to feel your love

Until it heals whatever darkness drove him

And he can see what it is he has done

And seek forgiveness and bring healing;

May this dark door open a path

That brightens constantly with new promise.

FOR A PARENT ON THE DEATH OF A CHILD

No one knows the wonder

Your child awoke in you,

Your heart a perfect cradle

To hold its presence.

Inside and outside became one

As new waves of love

Kept surprising your soul.

Now you sit bereft

Inside a nightmare,

Your eyes numbed

By the sight of a grave

No parent should ever see.

You will wear this absence

Like a secret locket,

Always wondering why

Such a new soul

Was taken home so soon.

Let the silent tears flow

And when your eyes clear

Perhaps you will glimpse

How your eternal child

Has become the unseen angel

Who parents your heart

And persuades the moon

To send new gifts ashore.

FOR OLD AGE

May the light of your soul mind you.

May all your worry and anxiousness about your age

Be transfigured.

May you be given wisdom for the eyes of your soul

To see this as a time of gracious harvesting.

May you have the passion to heal what has hurt you,

And allow it to come closer and become one with you.

May you have great dignity,

Sense how free you are;

Above all, may you be given the wonderful gift

Of meeting the eternal light that is within you.

May you be blessed;

And may you find a wonderful love

In your self for your self.

FOR DEATH

From the moment you were born,

Your death has walked beside you.

Though it seldom shows its face,

You still feel its empty touch

When fear invades your life,

Or what you love is lost

Or inner damage is incurred.

Yet when destiny draws you

Into these spaces of poverty,

And your heart stays generous

Until some door opens into the light,

You are quietly befriending your death;

So that you will have no need to fear

When your time comes to turn and leave.

That the silent presence of your death

Would call your life to attention,

Wake you up to how scarce your time is

And to the urgency to become free

And equal to the call of your destiny.

That you would gather yourself

And decide carefully

How you now can live

The life you would love

To look back on

From your deathbed.

TO LEARN FROM ANIMAL BEING

Nearer to the earth’s heart,

Deeper within its silence:

Animals know this world

In a way we never will.

We who are ever

Distanced and distracted

By the parade of bright

Windows thought opens:

Their seamless presence

Is not fractured thus.

Stranded between time

Gone and time emerging,

We manage seldom

To be where we are:

Whereas they are always

Looking out from

The here and now.

May we learn to return

And rest in the beauty

Of animal being,

Learn to lean low,

Leave our locked minds,

And with freed senses

Feel the earth

Breathing with us.

May we enter

Into lightness of spirit,

And slip frequently into

The feel of the wild.

Let the clear silence

Of our animal being

Cleanse our hearts

Of corrosive words.

May we learn to walk

Upon the earth

With all their confidence

And clear-eyed stillness

So that our minds

Might be baptized

In the name of the wind

And the light and the rain.

IN PRAISE OF WATER

Let us bless the grace of water:

The imagination of the primeval ocean

Where the first forms of life stirred

And emerged to dress the vacant earth

With warm quilts of color.

The well whose liquid root worked

Through the long night of clay,

Trusting ahead of itself openings

That would yet yield to its yearning

Until at last it arises in the desire of light

To discover the pure quiver of itself

Flowing crystal clear and free

Through delighted emptiness.

The courage of a river to continue belief

In the slow fall of ground,

Always falling farther

Toward the unseen ocean.

The river does what words would love,

Keeping its appearance

By insisting on disappearance;

Its only life surrendered

To the event of pilgrimage,

Carrying the origin to the end,

Seldom pushing or straining,

Keeping itself to itself

Everywhere all along its flow,

All at one with its sinuous mind,

An utter rhythm, never awkward,

It continues to swirl

Through all unlikeness,

With elegance:

A ceaseless traverse of presence

Soothing on each side

The stilled fields,

Sounding out its journey,

Raising up a buried music

Where the silence of time

Becomes almost audible.

Tides stirred by the eros of the moon

Draw from that permanent restlessness

Perfect waves that languidly rise

And pleat in gradual forms of aquamarine

To offer every last tear of delight

At the altar of stillness inland.

And the rain in the night, driven

By the loneliness of the wind

To perforate the darkness,

As though some air pocket might open

To release the perfume of the lost day

And salvage some memory

From its forsaken turbulence

And drop its weight of longing

Into the earth, and anchor.

Let us bless the humility of water,

Always willing to take the shape

Of whatever otherness holds it,

The buoyancy of water

Stronger than the deadening,

Downward drag of gravity,

The innocence of water,

Flowing forth, without thought

Of what awaits it,

The refreshment of water,

Dissolving the crystals of thirst.

Water: voice of grief,

Cry of love,

In the flowing tear.

Water: vehicle and idiom

Of all the inner voyaging

That keeps us alive.

Blessed be water,

Our first mother.