Waiting at the Threshold ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
February 2, 2025
The ancient legend tells us that St. Brigid of Kildare, in Ireland, was born on a threshold, at dawn, between indoors and outdoors, between night and day. She is celebrated at Imbolc, on February 1, as was the even more ancient Celtic goddess also known as Brigid, or Brighid, or Bride.
February 1, Imbolc, is an important day in earth-centered religions. It is known as a cross-quarter day, the day that marks the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Imbolc means ‘in the belly’, and in the British Isles it celebrates the beginning of the lambing season, and the sprouting of the earliest plants. This is a time when we might begin to feel new stirrings within – faint thoughts about new directions long before we’re ready to take action. Maybe we’re noticing that the sun is setting later. And right around now we turn our thoughts to seed catalogues, if we’re gardeners. Not to planting, yet, but to imagining, to dreaming. This is a time of turning; a still point; a realization that this halfway point will begin to send us around toward spring. Suddenly we are poised here; at the beginning before the beginning, on the threshold between winter and spring.
Of late we have been pausing at another threshold. All through January, and indeed, ever since the presidential election back in November, we have been approaching a new threshold, a new turning point. Many of us have faced this threshold with trepidation. In this deeply divided country, others waited with glee. We crossed that threshold on Inauguration Day, January 20. Suddenly the landscape looks very different all around us. We are being inundated with changes to long-held norms about how we govern ourselves, about how the people’s business is to be conducted, and by whom.
It’s been terribly hard to absorb the rapid changes that are proclaimed daily. We are being deliberately overwhelmed with a flood of executive orders and actions. It’s very hard to not respond with anxiety. Many voices are clamoring for immediate action, and our instincts are telling us that we may be wasting precious time, that if we wait, we might lose our democracy and our long-held rights and freedoms forever. “Resist!” the voices are calling. “Where is Congress?” “Why isn’t anyone telling us what to do?” The more and louder the voices, the larger the volume of emails and social media posts, the greater the anxiety.
I admit that I’ve also been doing some clamoring of my own. Action after action of the new administration seems to be met with muted protest. It’s frustrating, and scary. But increasingly, as the days are passing, I have found myself thinking more and more about whether there is value in watching and waiting.
It’s natural right now to feel anxious and to wonder what we should be doing. The loud voices make us feel that we aren’t doing enough, not reacting quickly enough. But those voices can tip us over into paralysis, and be less effective in the long run. It’s good for each and every one of us to think deeply about ourselves, and what feels like the right response for us. And one response can be watchful waiting. Here at Imbolc, much is ‘in the belly’, waiting for the right time to emerge.
It was the Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde, the courageous Episcopal bishop of Washington, D.C., who first started me thinking about what waiting, holding on, can really mean. We are so focused on immediate action in our culture. But in her book How We Learn to be Brave, Bishop Budde talks about how sometimes it takes courage on our part to stay still. To not act right away, to stay behind. We are more likely to notice risk-taking in our society – moving across country, selling everything and embarking on an entirely new life, leaving a profession in order to start a new vocation, to follow a dream, to step beyond our safety net. And yes, those are all acts that require great bravery.
But what of the quiet courage that calls us to stay? There are times in our lives when careful discernment tells us that the harder choice, the more demanding choice, will be to live out our lives right where we are. To stay in a marriage that could be happier. To stay in a job that is becoming unfulfilling. To choose to find a way to renew the marriage or the job satisfaction.
Bishop Budde tells the story of caring for her toddler son, and growing increasingly impatient with the sense that life was really passing her by as she took him for daily walks to visit the nearby farm animals. It was an anecdote that certainly resonated with me. I suddenly remembered being on maternity leave when a new program was announced by the state agency I worked for. There was a story on the Boston TV news, and suddenly, there were all my colleagues pictured sitting at a news conference. And there I sat at home, in my worst clothing, hair uncombed…you get the picture. I forgot for a moment that actual real life was lying right there snoozing in my arms, and felt acutely that my life was passing me by.
But there was no question that it was time to wait, to be home. Looking back, I don’t even remember the new housing program that my agency had announced. Looking back, I really missed nothing important.
We are conditioned today to expect immediate action, especially if we are in pain or despairing. We want quick fixes, and to return to comfort. Author Sue Monk Kidd wrote, “We live in an age of acceleration, in an era so seduced by the instantaneous that we’re in grave danger of losing our ability to wait. Life moves at a staggering pace…last week, while thumbing through a catalogue, I noticed a video entitled ‘Discover Yourself in Less Than Thirty Minutes.’” She continued, “Quick and easy are magical words with enormous seductive powers.” (When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions, Kindle edition, p. 22.)
It’s very hard to slow ourselves down, to pause on a threshold, to take the time to choose, to decide whether to cross it or not.
In times like we’re living through right now, waiting can seem less courageous. I tend to be someone who waits, who considers all the angles cautiously before acting. I’ve sometimes sensed the frustration of friends or co-workers, and sometimes have wondered if I’m seen as lacking courage. At times I’ve felt that way about myself. Sue Monk Kidd, best known for her novel The Secret Life of Bees, admits that she has felt the same way. She saw waiting as merely passive. But she tells us that she once looked up the word ‘passive’ in the dictionary, and found that it and the word ‘passion’ come from the Latin root ‘pati’, which means ‘to endure’. Sue wrote, “Waiting is thus both passive and passionate. It’s a vibrant, contemplative work. It means descending into self, into God, into the deeper labyrinths of prayer.” (Ibid.)
Waiting, as a monk once told Sue during a retreat, is not doing nothing. In stillness, in pausing, he explained, we give ourselves a chance to become who God created us to be.
Waiting – for clarity, for discernment, for wisdom to emerge, can be hard and even painful. Anne Lamott’s comparison to the desert in her essay that Lucille read earlier was no accident. Waiting can plunge us into a bleak and barren, lifeless time. And there is no way to come through it quickly, before we are ready, before we have listened to our souls and to the still small voice we each possess deep within, and can decide if it’s time to take that first step away from the threshold.
Waiting, of course, is a spiritual practice. Sue Monk Kidd pointed out that the Bible is full of times of waiting: Jesus disappearing into the wilderness for 30 days, or the long night in the Garden of Gethsemane.
For some people, the time to act might have already arrived. Others are still gathering clarity and energy for the work ahead, pausing and asking themselves what they can do. As I wrote this, the news continued to get more and more frightening. And rights and privacy are being snatched away at such a rapid pace that those issues are already beyond what the average citizen – all of us here right now – are able to do much about.
But the reality is, there is still plenty that we can do, even if we decide to stay put, as Bishop Budde put it, to not make radical changes of our own. Right after the election there were comments that no matter who won, the work remains the same. Our work, while we wait and hope for better days, is always the same. Protect the vulnerable, help make sure that people have food and shelter, and access to medical and legal help. That work would still be ours to do even if the election had had a different outcome. As Anne Lamott said, “…this will be my fight song: left foot, right foot, breathe. Help the poor however you can, plant bulbs right now in the cold rocky soil, and rest.” Rest when we need to, and do all we can, every day, to create hope for ourselves and for all those around us.
Brigid, the goddess, and later St. Brigid, was always depicted as having fiery red hair. She was associated with thresholds and the return of new life, but also associated with fire. She was the goddess of the hearth, and of the forge. At her convent in Kildare, she and her followers maintained an eternal flame. At the same time, Brigid was also associated with wells, and the calming peace of deep waters. Perhaps Brigid is telling us, there is a time to be fiery, and a time to contemplate, to seek out our wellsprings. She is telling us there are many roles for us all.
May you take the time you need to listen for the still, small voice telling you what role you are called to play in the coming days, and may you have faith that the world will need whatever you have to offer.
Left foot, right foot, breathe.
