“Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering, ‘It will be happier.” Alfred Lord Tennyson
Esther de Waal 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.’
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.
We have been living with the uncertainties of life in the larger world and here in Rocky Mount, NC. 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 to reap the consequences of their actions. I visualize Rocky Mount’s skullduggery captured in a snow globe that is always snowing about something. Because of what we have been through, this threshold we are about to cross seems a big step.
We need to pay attention to this threshold moment this year. In the monastic world, 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 and residential architecture while building a future.
Housing is a top priority that includes saving the shotgun and bungalows houses that are boarded up. There are several housing things in the works, big money, left to the same people who did business with Hunt that the City Manager was dealing with and the council members backed. We already know how that turned out. How can we turn around again and let them decided where the low income housing is to be built by whom? The HUD grant is amazing but the same people will decide how it is spent.
Take my hand, let’s be still together, and then cross this important threshold into 2022. We must be determined that nothing can 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 with the ‘bad stuff.’ 2022 is filled with possibilities. We seize them for our own lives, and for those we love, for our friends and neighbors, and for this good place we call home.
Main Street Rocky Mount 