Threshold of 2025
A threshold is a place where one landscape transitions into another. Where the river flows into the sea, the prairie crescendos into the mountain, the woods part for the valley. In my experience, nobody articulates spiritual thresholds more artfully than Irish-Catholic poet and mystic John O'Donohue (1956-2008). This is an excerpt from his book To Bless the Space Between Us:
A threshold is not a simple boundary;
it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms and atmospheres.
Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience
or a stage of life that it intensifies towards the end into a real frontier
that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up.
At this threshold a great complexity of emotion comes alive:
confusion, fear, excitement, sadness, hope.
This is one reason why such vital crossings were always clothed in ritual.
It is wise in your own life to be able to recognize and acknowledge the key thresholds:
to take your time, to feel all the varieties of presence that accrue there,
to listen inwards with complete attention
until you hear the inner voice calling you forward.
The time has come to cross.
To acknowledge and cross a new threshold is always a challenge.
It demands courage and also a sense of trust in whatever is emerging.
This becomes essential when a threshold opens suddenly in front of you,
one for which you had no preparation.
This could be illness, suffering or loss.
Because we are so engaged with the world,
we usually forget how fragile life can be and how vulnerable we always are.
It takes only a couple of seconds for a life to change irreversibly.
Suddenly you stand on completely strange ground
and a new course of life has to be embraced.
Especially at such times we desperately need blessing and protection.
You look back at the life you have lived up to a few hours before,
and it suddenly seems so far away.
Think for a moment how, across the world, someone’s life has just changed –
irrevocably, permanently, and not necessarily for the better –
and everything that was once so steady, so reliable, must now find a new way of unfolding.
Though we know one another’s names and recognize one another’s faces,
we never know what destiny shapes each life.
The script of individual destiny is secret;
it is hidden behind and beneath the sequence of happenings
that is continually unfolding for us.
Each life is a mystery that is never finally available to the mind’s light or questions.
That we are here is a huge affirmation; somehow life needed us and wanted us to be.
To sense and trust this primeval acceptance can open a vast spring of trust within the heart.
It can free us into a natural courage that casts out fear and opens up our lives
to become voyages of discovery, creativity, and compassion.
No threshold need be a threat, but rather an 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.
For me, 2024 was a vital crossing. Some might call it an integration; but I would by lying if I made it sound graceful. It was not. Something changed in my biology and in my consciousness this year that was very uncomfortable and isolating. If I could describe it, I might say that it became absolutely intolerable to be anything other than my authentic self. Which included revealing to many in my life the raw, vulnerable, angry, and terrified parts that seemed to need to come into focus. Instead of hiding these parts, I let them expose themselves not only to others, but to the mirror of my heart, and for the first time I was able to gaze at some very hurt frontiers with true compassion, wisdom, and respect.
This personal transformation has been mostly being transcribed and articulated through my artwork, writing, and teaching practices. Which is why in 2025, I am committing fully to being independent in my work. What's on the horizon is a little terrifying but I am certain it is my authentic gift to the world and I hope you will come along for the ride.
Love,
Morgan Kulas
Artist, Writer, & Teacher