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« SERVICE & SELF-CARE, A ROLE MODEL
CONSIDER – PARADOXES & HUMOR. . . »

DOORS & CHOICES. . .

June 28, 2021 by Searcher Seeker

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.’ 

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