Thresholds

Some thoughts about thresholds...

This is the threshold I crossed for years when I was growing up in the village of Mitla, Oaxaca, Mexico. I went back there this summer after doing some Godly Play with orphans in Tapachula, Chiapas. I found our old house that I still recognized after 35 years....remembering the dusty streets, adobe walls with doors like this with little hint of what was found on the other side. Doors that gave one entrance into a courtyard with flowers, pomegranate trees, guayaba fruit and patio walkways to the other rooms...such a difference on one side from the other...


Happy New Year!

I spent New Years Eve sitting in candle light with a small group of Friends at the Quaker Meeting where I have pastored for the past five years until I took this new position with the Godly Play Foundation in November. Meeting had been canceled for the past two weeks because of snow. We also were not able to have our annual Candlelight Christmas Eve service because of the weather so we decided to gather on New Years Eve....

It seemed good to be sitting in silence and having time to reflect on what this past year has held and to look forward to this new year.

My thoughts, as they often are, find language from Godly Play to help me: ....endings that are beginnings and beginnings that are endings....time, time, time....

Thinking of new beginnings I have found myself reflecting on the understanding we have in Godly Play of the critical importance of thresholds...that deep awareness of being awake to those events, times, places that mark and help us mark transitions and remind us of the importance of being ready.

Jerome Berryman came to the Quaker Meeting where I was on staff some 10 years or so ago. He was there for a month as a scholar in residence and among other things, helped us build a Godly Play classroom. I'm sure we talked about the importance of crossing the threshold into that space and of being ready but like many parts of Godly Play (or any spiritual practice), I didn't really "get it" until several years later. We were sloppy about how the children came into the room and sloppy about how we got ready. It wasn't until I did some training and experienced it for myself and saw how it was really done, that I had one of those "aha!" moments of understanding what crossing the threshold is really about. I now talk about my experience in the trainings and really believe it to be true that 80 - 90% of the "problems" that are concerns in the Godly Play circle are almost eliminated if there is good enough attention given to how we cross the threshold and get ready. I would encourage all of you who do Godly Play to look periodically about how you cross the threshold and revisit the importance of that.

In this new year, I wish for you places and people and practices in your lives that help you get ready and help you be awake and aware of the thresholds in your lives. May you continue to practice stopping and checking in with yourselves about where you are and you are as you come to thresholds.

May you be intentional and attentional about how you enter.

Caryl