Monday Manna
The time has come to cross...
Thank you so much, my friend, for subscribing to Monday Manna. I’m so glad and humbled you are here. My prayer with this little pause on Monday mornings is to offer some nourishment (“manna”) for you — via my reflection, prayer, and painting — as you are nourishing the world around you. Together, we are watching for the ways God is with us and for us as we take one day at a time…
Good morning, my friends, and blessings to you in this Holy week…
Thank you all so very, very much for your prayers and support in these last couple of weeks. I had to take a short pause from Monday Manna while my brother and I were moving my mom with Alzheimer’s across states from a Memory Care in South Dakota to a different place near my brother in Minnesota. It was an epic adventure…beyond what any of could have anticipated.
On Sunday, the night before my mom’s move and our planned drive, major snow and ice storms swept through the plains, resulting in complete closures of all highways and interstates on our route. My heroic brother found an alternate route for us to take, heading toward North Dakota instead, and after a lot of prayer and deliberating, we decided to go for it. We scrapped the U-haul we’d planned to bring — too dangerous with the road conditions—and fit everything we could in the back of my brother’s van.
“This is such a clown car,” he said, as we shoved the last boxes in the back and shut the trunk with hopes it would seal. My mom sat up front alongside my brother and I tucked myself in next to suitcases, a handful of bluestem we’d picked on the last visit to my mom’s childhood farm, puffy winter coats, and a lampshade.
By God’s complete grace and a miracle, we made it to Duluth, carried every mile of the way by the tangible prayers of many (alongside a lot of 1970s music and bars of chocolate).
There is so much I want to say and share from this experience — and I trust I will in due time — but for today, I want to reflect on the power and calling of thresholds.
Our lives are filled with thresholds — these moments of potent change, when we are invited to cross into something new. Some thresholds are chosen, but there many thrust upon us, sometimes very unwelcome — a diagnosis, a loss, a sudden change in plans. Life can completely and irreversibly change in a singular moment.
I was thinking a lot about thresholds as we approached this momentous change with my mom. The day before the move, we held a small gathering in her memory care wing with family and staff.
I began by talking about one of my parents’ favorite Scripture passages from Ecclesiastes 3. “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven,” I said. “Later on, the passage promises, ‘God has made everything beautiful in its time.’* We are welcomed into this time of remembering and reflecting on one season as we also bless and prepare for a new one.”
My voice disappeared as tears filled my eyes. In the pause, my mom, with a perplexed expression on her face said, “Well, I’m not going to the grave!!!” A miraculous moment of levity and laughter, lifting all of us as we held the hope of what’s to come and the sadness of goodbyes in tandem.
My brother then read this beloved passage on thresholds from Irish poet John O’Donohue in his book, To Bless the Space Between Us. He says,
At any time, you can ask yourself: At which threshold am I now standing? At this time in my life, what am I leaving? What 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 a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience or a stage of life that intensifies toward the end into a real frontier that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up. At a 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…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…”**
In the center of the room was a small table holding a tray of stones, each of them with the word “grateful.” There is ancient belief that stones are living things, and I found it meaningful to choose them as a way to embody the way love is alive, not bound by time or distance. We’d gathered to mark the crossing of this threshold, with each person in the circle sharing one word they thought of when they think of my mom. After sharing, they gave my mom a hug, and picked up their stone.
The stories and words shared varied, creating such a rich tapestry displaying the beautiful spirit of my mom. The all-accepting way she made anyone and everyone feel included. The answer to prayer she was for another resident who was her best friend in memory care (a mutual answer to prayer, to be sure). The way she’d used her law degree to serve and help the board of a residential re-entry home helping those recently released from prison.
She is not going to the grave (as she made very clear!), and yet it was a kind of “living eulogy” time in which people who loved her could bless the crossing. It reminded me that when we must summon the courage to cross a threshold, God never leaves us to do it alone. We always have companions who will hold our hands as we do.
Like the season of spring, which is just coming to life around us, these threshold moments can also be silently and secretly fermenting below the surface. This was our family’s experience for a long while before we realized this move needed to happen. Like O’Donohue said, we have to be listening, because in time, we will know…the time has come to cross.
And as we also learned through this experience, sometimes the crossing takes place in a way much different than you ever imagined it would. After we’d made the harrowing drive, I told my brother I found it both profound and symbolic we had to devise a completely new and uncharted route to get my mom to her new home. "Well, that’s one way to put a spin on it!” he said.
Perhaps you are in the midst of crossing a threshold right now. Or maybe you have your ear to the ground, and are sensing the faintest stirrings of the voice which will soon call you forward…Collectively, this Holy Week is a powerful threshold time. We mark and remember the depth of suffering Jesus faced in crossing a threshold that would bring new life to all and change everything. So for these thresholds we face, I want to leave you with these pieces of encouragement.
Remember who you are. Take stock of the countless beautiful qualities comprising the spirit within you. Maybe you invite others, like with my mom, to mirror them back to you. God has made you to be able to do this.
See the people whose love holds you. When you enter this next leg of the journey, there may be some new companions, alongside the love of those who have walked with you thus far. You are never alone. They are God in the flesh.
Trust God is making all things beautiful in their time. This is an opportunity to see with the eyes of faith, and know that while much remains unknown, and perhaps even painful, God never wastes an opportunity to create something beyond our imagining.
O’Donohue closes his section on ‘thresholds’ with these words, which can be our parting promise…
“No threshold need be a threat, but rather than 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.” ***
*Ecclesiastes 3:1-11
*To Bless the Space Between Us, by John O’Donohue, p. 49
*Ibid., p. 50
A Prayer
When I was writing my book, Ash and Starlight, and dividing the prayers into sections, I originally had one titled, “For Thresholds.” I ended up changing it to “For Guidance and Transition,” but it all feels the same. Here is a prayer from Ash and Starlight for “When I need to breathe and live into something new.”
When I need to breathe and live into something new
Spirit of Life,
Teach me to breathe…
to gulp with desperate surrender
your life-giving energy,
not out of fear,
but because I am listening
to my primal hungers
and rejoicing in them.
The breath you give me in
this moment is a messenger,
telling me how right now
I am reborn.
I am cared for.
I am called…
Charged with the call
to channel my breath,
your life-force,
toward a gasping world.
Your breath is eternal—
never stopping,
never returning empty.
It continuously flows to
spread life and promise
if I will be a river rather than a dam.
If I listen, I will learn.
I will ride the wind of
your breath now filling me,
letting it carry me away from
my middle anchor to the
edges where I’ll grow and glimpse
the purpose you have
for ever-evolving me.
Amen.
Genesis 2:7 * 2 Corinthians 5:17 * Philippians 1:6
“[I]f anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation:… see, every-
thing has become new!” —2 Corinthians 5:17
Something that nourished me recently…
*Setting up my mom’s new room…we made some peony curtains and pillows from a my watercolor painting.
*Dawn over Lake Superior the morning we were settling my mom into her new place.
*Coming home to these roses….
Ash and Starlight, plus other good things…
* MY ETSY SHOP ~ I’m working to prep some things to launch this spring! In the meantime, I have cards, prints, clothes, blankets, and pillows all for sale in my Etsy shop which you can view here . I send portions of sales in my Etsy shop to World Central Kitchen which provides hunger relief.
*SECOND EDITION OF ASH AND STARLIGHT ~ Find the updated edition of my book here at Chalice or at the Bookshop link.
*MONDAY MANNA ARCHIVES ~ Monday Manna each week is free! Paid supporters of Monday Manna can view previous Monday Manna reflections here, or for the really old stuff, go to my website.
*WHAT DOES MANNA MEAN? ~ Check out an earlier post to learn how this little bit of “daily bread” got its name…
Remember, friends, thresholds are invitations, and as O’Donohue reminds us, there will be visible signs of invisible grace along the way. “We merely need to trust.”
Love and Light,
Arianne
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Powerful and poignant - grateful for being able to hear this part of the journey. {{hugs}}
Thank you for opening this part of your life with everyone for all of us to learn beside you. Hugs to you and your family. This post connected to me (again).
I have a dear friend that has just finished a beautiful book called “Ritual Well” that connects so much to the ritual that you created during this transition in your lives. You might enjoy reading this. My friend and the author, Jean Sutton, is another great inspirational writer like you (and ordained Presbyterian minister!) Reading it, I found how we can bring rituals in the thresholds of our lives like you and your brother did; so nourishing for the soul. After reading this, I think you would like the book.
Take care through this time. 💜