If the doors of my heart ever close, I am as good as dead. –Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver reminds me that I have choice. I choose to close the doors of my heart and I choose to open them. Both have consequences. When I close my heart’s door I might as well be dead. When I choose to open the door of my heart I do more than simply extend a smile of recognition or offer a nod of welcome to all who seek to cross the threshold of my heart’s door. By welcoming others – the person or the transcendent – into my heart I open myself to grow and change in unexpected ways, perhaps in mysterious ways. I risk being transformed.
The pattern of this transformational process is akin to the physical movement of passing through a doorway. First, I discern that a door exists in front of me, then I move toward the door – sometimes with confidence, sometimes with a bit of dread or just with hesitancy. If the door is closed then I must open it. Sometimes the door is locked and I will need a special key in order to open the door. Sometimes the door can only be opened from the inside and so I must knock and wait patiently for the door to be opened. As the door is opened and I prepare to step forward I move across the threshold, the middle of the doorway. For a brief moment I have choice – I can continue to step across the threshold or I can retreat; either way I choose to move the door will close behind me (as the Quakers so elegantly put it, ‘Way opens and way closes.’).
I imagine that this same type of movement happens internally when life situations – events or moments – invite me to become more fully who I am called to be in my world. My choices, my decisions, determine whether I will cross the threshold and enter into a space of growth or whether I will turn away and cling to the person I am at the time (you might recall, gentle reader, that in Afghani the verb ‘to cling’ is the same as the verb ‘to die). I know if I choose to cross the threshold that more than a shift or a change will occur; I know that a transformation will take place.
As I sit here this morning reflecting on my life and my spiritual journey, I remember the innumerable times when I chose to turn away from, or I just flatly missed, the opportunities that waited for me on the other side of a door. At times I was so self-preoccupied that I even missed that there was a door there at all. At other times I remember stopping in front of a door full of apprehension; I was aware that if I choose to open the door and cross the threshold I would have to let go of something or I would have to die to something in order to enter the space beyond the door and so once again I chose to cling to what I had, to who I was, and so I turned and walked away.
I can still experience the depth of relief and sadness I felt when I chose to do so. I can even remember using a great deal of energy as I held the door shut as it was being opened from the other side. I remember other times when I lingered on the threshold weighing my options. I also recall being tossed over the threshold by ‘circumstances’ beyond my control – by life’s events. Sometimes I was nudged over the threshold by a mentor or I was called forth by the ‘being’ on the other side.
More often than not, when I chose to respond to the invitation to discern a door, to then approach the door, to open the door, to step across the threshold into ‘new territory’ that I experienced being filled with awe and wonder as I embraced the mystery, the unknown, that I had stepped into. I used to think that with age all of this would be ‘easier’ for me; perhaps it is better for me that it is not for I must continue to be awake and aware, intentional and purpose-full when it comes to discerning, approaching, and choosing which doors to open and which thresholds to cross. As I look up from typing these words I can see the top of a door just over the horizon; excuse me while I close for now and take a step. Will I choose to step toward the door or away from it? Ah, this is my question for today.
My Singaporean friend, Yim Harn, took this photo of a door she found in Singapore; thank you my friend for reminding me about ‘doors.’
Searcher-Seeker 