The idea of worship in work was at once a doctrine and a daily discipline. The ideal was variously expressed that secular achievements should be as "free from error" as conduct, that manual labor was a type of religious ritual, that godliness should illuminate life at every point.
~ from SHAKER FURNITURE by Edward and Faith Andrews
Dear Friends, We stand on a threshold, peering at a new year, "full of things that have never been" (Teilhard de Chardin); an in-between space, suspended between what we think we know and worlds we cannot see, the ringing now before what comes next. We come to thresholds like these hauling courage with trembling hands. Will we step through to peril? to transformation? Sages say both. Yet we are not bereft. We can catch light for the journey, provisions for the road.
Resplendent and eternal is Wisdom,
readily perceived by those who listen
in the Silence of the heart.
Wisdom hastens to make Herself known;
She is available to all who love and seek Her, who awakens Her from within
will not be disappointed;
for Wisdom awaits at the threshold.
Now the old has already passed away<
But the new is too new to be born today
So I'm throwing out seeds on the winter snow<
As the cold wind begins to blow
Standing here on a new threshold
I can see a warm dim light in the window...
I pass from mystery to mystery, so I won't lie
I don't know what happens when people die
but I hope that I see you...
In the distance I see a glow
There's a light, there's a light, there's light
In the window.
I was beginning to realize that you must
come slowly to a place; wait a little before
feverishly resorting to guidebooks...Place
has a mighty tongue of its own.
Whether you know it or not, you were
born to have a rendezvous with destiny;
your journey toward it has already
begun. But my people make a distinction between destiny and fate. We don't think we are
born with a "fate" that impels us to act out some script composed by a higher hand, but
rather that each of us has a destiny, a preexisting pattern, which, in our hearts, we wish one
day to fulfill.
How do we hold both the magnificence and tragedy of the world, as if we stand at a threshold with Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and endings, looking in two directions? ...How do we find the way if we can't see around the bend? ...In our time of disturbance and radical change, we are crossing a threshold, a portal, or an unseen bridge from one world to another. It could be said that the bridge is either collapsing beneath us, or being made as we walk together...
~ from WILD FAITH by Geneen Marie Haugen (Garrison Institute blog entry)
Beginning well or beginning poorly, what is
important is simply to begin....Beginning is difficult,
and our procrastination is a fine ever-present
measure of our reluctance in taking that first
close-in, courageous step to reclaiming our
happiness...It is always hard to believe that the
courageous step is so close to us, that it is closer than
we ever could imagine, that in fact, we already know
what it is...
If you creep out down to the river in the light of a
full moon, you'll see her there, Old Crane Woman.
She'll be standing on one leg, still as can be, and
you'll know her by her frayed grey and white dress
and her long, thin arms with the sharp, sticking-out
elbows. She'll be staring into the river, for Old
Crane Woman knows that inspiration comes always
at the side of the water, there on the edge, in that
troubling threshold place between one element and
another.
Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change...
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent Earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.
~ from SONNETS TO ORPHEUS, Part Two, XXIX by Rainer Maria Rilke
