Pausing at the Threshold of a New Year: A Reflection From Stepheny’s Bench On Main Street

I found  a quote of Alfred Lord Tennyson that I used on the Main Street Facebook page,                                

“Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering, ‘It will be happier.”

The word threshold holds a deeper meaning after I began to read the books of Esther de Waal. She wrote a small treasure called, To Pause at the Threshold – Reflections on Living on the Border. She writes about a traditional saying of ancient wisdom, ‘A threshold is a sacred thing,’ of the importance of honoring thresholds from that perspective.

After a dreadful year of consequences, the reasons too long to repeat, we need to pause before we step across the threshold into the New Year.  It is our life’s work to learn how to hold the losses and changes that occur in our lives, integrating all that has happened into who we become. The year 2020 will be like Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter’s world, the one who shall not be named.

We have been living with the uncertainties of life in the larger world. If that isn’t enough, at home we have a litany of names we speak every day, while standing on one foot and then the other, waiting for those who are working the system for personal gain to reap the consequences of their actions. I always think of Kermit the frog who says, “It isn’t easy being green.”

Despite constant prayer throughout 2020, we have known anger, frustration, sadness, and great loss.  All things far more significant than gazing at Rocky Mount’s skullduggery captured in a snow globe that is always snowing about something. Small in scope perhaps, but huge in Rocky Mount’s world. Because of what we have been through, this threshold we are about to cross seems a big step.

Like the traditional monastic practice, we need to pay attention to this threshold moment. When the monk or nun enters the church for the daily offices, they make time to stand, to wait, creating a stillness that permits each one to let go of all the previous hurried moments of duty or obligation. We want to cross this threshold ready to find it happier. We want to focus on all the good and positive things happening in the revitalization of Rocky Mount. We cheer on The Repairers of the Breach that are hard at work preserving, restoring, and repurposing the commercial architecture while building a future. We’ve got to get intentional about saving the shotgun and bungalows houses that are boarded up.

Take my hand, let’s be still together, and then cross this important threshold with the Main Street Band all in place, small flags in everyone’s hand along the curbside, determined that nothing could keep a wonderful community like Rocky Mount from becoming a prism of light in Eastern North Carolina. Let’s claim all the ‘good stuff,’ and refuse to get bogged down by all the ‘bad stuff.’ 2021 is filled with possibilities. We seize them for our own lives, and those we love, for our neighbors, and for this good place we call home.