Thresholds

Jan - July 2025 Wandering Archive

O Come, O Come 

The land is still wide before me, sand stretching out in waves of gold. The wind sings low, a voice neither cruel nor kind, only steady. I have walked long beneath this sky. I had forgotten even before I set out, the taste of rain.

This morning, I dreamt I met a woman at the wayside, and she praised my steps, saying I had come far. I felt pride rise in me, though I knew the road ahead was longer still. Before I could dwell in the warmth of her kindness, another voice intruded... one I have long endured, though never loved. A voice that speaks false joy, as though we do not both know the weight of our silences. I gave her no more than was required. I have learned, over time, that not all company is meant to be kept. Some voices are only echoes that stir the dust, nothing more.

But there was another, though... one who was well-meaning but careless, one who wished to bear the light I carried but did not know how. I was given a lamp, old and strange, filled with sacred oil, meant to be passed from my hands to another. Yet she fumbled with it, time and again, and I was left to set it aright, to shield the flame when she would smother it. 

Later, I took to the road again. A companion I miss walked beside me for a while, and I remembered joy. We travelled together through a wintered land, and for a time, I thought we were safe, that the road was only a road. But beneath the mountain, the tunnel flooded, water rising swift and treacherous. I tried to press through, thinking I could still cross, but it was deeper than I had known. And when the water swallowed the wheels, I saw the fire start-- small licks of flame kindling in the dark, the water around us reeking of oil and ruin-- It was not just water. It was death waiting to catch.

But we ran, and we lived.

Memories? The future? Sometimes they feel the same.

As the night leans close, I sit alone again, in a shack by the road... not mine, but safe for a while. There is no great warmth here, but there is steadiness, and I am weary enough to be grateful for it. Outside, the desert waits, and I do not yet know what the next mile will bring. But I am prepared, or as prepared as any pilgrim can be.

A New Horizon

I have reached a place I did not expect, and yet it feels as though it was waiting for me all along. 

No longer am I standing at the edge of something unfinished, waiting for a hand to reach back. The waiting has ended. And in its place, there is sky. There is wind. There is a world stretching before me, not as a challenge to endure, but as an invitation.

I do not know yet if this is home or a resting place. Perhaps I will build something here. Perhaps I will walk onward, knowing now that my steps are steady because they are my own. What matters is that I am here, and for the first time, that is enough.

I place my hand upon my chest and feel its warmth. I will not abandon myself.

The sun rises.

Standing in my Own Shadow

Lately, I’ve been feeling something shift-- something subtle yet profound. It’s as if I finally understand what it means to live.

For so long, I felt like I was made of three overlapping selves. One part of me was always being pulled backward, resisting forward motion, and whenever I tried to move ahead, I had to drag that weight with me. Another part leaned forward, constantly reaching for the next thing-- the next assignment, the next Sunday, the next night, the next month. And somewhere in between was the person I actually was, caught between these two forces, unable to simply exist in the moment.

For years, my past pulled me down, but God severed those ties so I could move forward. Yet, I had spent so long straining against the weight that, once freed, I only knew how to keep running. I overshot the present, always racing ahead, feeling that if I ever stopped in the middle, I’d be vulnerable... either to being pulled back again, or to feeling guilty for not constantly moving forward.

But today, I realised something: Every single day that I’ve lived, has been its own day. Time still flows forward, marked by our own increments, but I only ever exist in one moment at a time.

And that moment is always new.

And so now? Now, I feel like I’m standing under a lamppost with my shadow directly beneath me. No double images, no overlapping lights—just me, where I am, fully present. I feel less strained, less worried, less sad. I don’t know what the next hour will hold, but somehow, that’s okay. The things that need to get done will get done. I’ll grow, sometimes in great leaps, sometimes in ways so small I won’t notice until I’m faced with something that once would have troubled me-- only to find that it no longer does.

And for the first time, it doesn’t feel like dissociation. It doesn’t feel like I’m detaching from the world to protect myself. It feels like I am in my own skin, whole and unburdened. I’m not beholden to how others feel about me, not measured by how well I please them. My worth is simply in God, and if I am lucky, that truth will reflect in the work I do, in the art I create, in the ways I give to others, in the life I live.

I see now that happiness isn’t something fragile or conditional. It isn’t dependent on who stays or who goes. It is not something that others give or take away. But I confess I still carry echoes of my old fears... fear of transience, fear of imperfection, of failure. But every day that passes proves those fears wrong. Every day, I grow stronger in my relationship with God and in my knowledge of myself.

And I think… maybe this is what living is supposed to be.

Not endless mourning. Not pre-emptive fussing. Not running forward or backward, but a free, active participation in the world as a whole being, moment by moment.

And now I wonder: is this what others feel all the time? Or is this something I should share, something that might help someone else find the peace I’ve found? Because if I had known this sooner, if I had known that life could feel this way, I think it would have changed many things.

And maybe, for someone out there, it still can.

 

Life’s Unfolding Journey

I am. It is. And all shall be as it shall be.

I found myself sitting with the weight of that today. It was not heavy, not light, just true. I had prayed, and afterward, I simply sat. No pressing concerns, no urgent emotions, just the awareness that everything I know now-- this life, this season-- could shift in an instant. Not in a way that made me afraid, only in the way that reminds me that life does not stand still.

I remember the day my world shut down. I don’t remember the night before. I don’t remember if I had a sense that anything was coming, because it was just another night. How many moments in life have been like that? How many nights before the world changed? Before loss, before joy, before something new?

It makes me wonder: what if I had known? What if I had known, at four years old, that I would reach eighteen years old and beyond, and that time was not something to fight against? What if I had known, years ago, the lessons I have now? Would it have changed how I lived?

I think so. But I also think we are meant to learn in layers, not all at once. The child-me was right to be frustrated, just as the present-me is right to sit in the quiet awareness of what is. Neither was wrong, even if we are both foolish.

And perhaps that is the lesson, after all. Life is not a countdown. It is not a contest. It is not something to be managed or predicted, only lived. It unfolds, as it must. As it shall.

I am. It is. And all shall be as it shall be.

 

The Overflow (Of what once was empty)

Today I sit on a grassy outcropping, the wind carrying the scent of salt and hearth-smoke as it tangles through the open sea air. Below, the village hums with life... boats bobbing in the harbor, children laughing, and the gentle rhythm of the tide matching the rise and fall of distant voices. I watch, but I do not long. I rest, but I am not waiting.

I am.

Waybread in my hands, the warmth of the earth beneath me, the sky stretching vast and endless overhead... and I am thinking, I do not strive to belong here. I do not earn this moment. It simply is, and I simply am. There is no tension in it. No need to grasp. No fear of losing it.

And perhaps that is the secret I have longed for, without knowing it. That peace is not something I must fight for; it is something I must simply stop resisting.

The village will welcome me when I walk through. The children will wave, and I will wave back. But for now, I sit, I breathe, and I stretch into the fullness of myself. Not searching, not proving. Just being.

And it is enough.

 

The Calling and the Road Ahead

The fire flickers, and I watch the embers settle into their glow. There is something in the way they linger, not burning with the wild fervor of fresh kindling, but steady. Persistent. It reminds me of the great tasks given to those who came before-- of the reformers who stepped into the unknown, the mystics who lost themselves in the silence of God, the voices that spoke when speaking carried great cost.

I have been thinking about them... their convictions, their burdens, their callings. And I wonder, as so many pilgrims have before me: What is set before me? Is it something I am meant to choose, or something that has already chosen me? 

John Calvin did not set out to transform Geneva. He wanted a quiet life of study, but the road bent sharply, and he was faced with a question: Follow your desire, or follow God? In light of this, I find myself wondering, Are these always separate things? Must there always be tension between what we long for and what we are made for? Or could it be that the desires God places within us are, themselves, the map?

I turn the question over in my mind. This Crosswinds Pilgrim project has been forming in me... not suddenly, but slowly, like a road appearing beneath my feet. It is not simply an idea; it is a structure, a way of life that allows me to walk with God, to create, to share. But is it calling? Or is it simply mine? And if it is mine, is that enough? 

I think of the reformers, the desert fathers, the poets and theologians who shaped the faith through words and presence. Their paths were not random. They did not force themselves into callings that ill-fitted them. Rather, they stepped into tasks that were both weighty and suited to their strengths and situations. A mystic is called to contemplation; a teacher is called to teach; a builder is called to shape what does not yet exist. 

I am beginning to think that calling is not some alien command, separate from all that we are. It is the refinement of what is already burning within us. The shaping of our longing into something that serves, something that lasts.

 And so I sit here, staring into the fire, feeling the weight of both freedom and purpose. Pilgrimage has never been about certainty... it is about walking forward, step by step, trusting the road to unfold.

Morning Light 

Morning light spills across my table, illuminating the steam rising from my cup. It is quiet, save for the slow rhythm of my breath, the gentle creak of the wood beneath me. A moment of stillness, a moment of wonder. How far I have come even since last year... let alone those before that.

I trace the steps that led me here, as one might follow a winding road on a map. There were winters where my hands were numb from the cold before the sun had risen, where I stood in the biting air, my body aching as I worked to keep my stomach full. There were winters before that, where fear was the first thing I woke to, where my home did not feel like mine, where my spirit was worn thin from carrying too much for too long. And before that-- before I walked away-- there was a life I hardly recognize as my own.

But today, I sit here, in warmth, in peace. My morning tea, fresh and fragrant, and filling the air with its rich scent... The simplest of luxuries. I sip, and it is smooth, light, with only the faintest echo of something deeper, like dried fruit lingering at the edges of memory. 

This is how life is meant to be. Not perfect, not without struggle, but abundant in ways I could not have imagined. Not an emptiness, not a grasping hunger, but a cup that overflows. The journey has not ended, nor will it, but the road is bright ahead. And though I do not know what awaits, I know it is good.

The future is strange, thrilling, unknown. But so is any adventure worth taking.

Somewhere Between

I passed a cairn this morning. No writing, no sign... just a small, half-buried pile telling me someone else once passed this way. Someone who, like me, didn’t come here for the scenery, but because their path and calling required it. God, may they have found water. May they have found others to drink it with.

Some days, I see mirages... not of more oases, but of faces. Sometimes they are kind. Sometimes cruel. I’ve walked beside those not built for pilgrimage, which I have come to see neither as a blessing, nor a curse, but something that simply is, though I confess I do not count myself as less fortunate now. Some didn’t know what they sought, others had people to bury, perhaps. But I see clearly now, too, that I do not travel light because I lack roots, I travel light because I carry meaning, and it is heavy enough.

Still, it is lonely. And I am not hopeless, but tired. I have been sustained by the manna of friendship, beauty, prayer, the little moments that say, “you are not forgotten,” and they are sacred, but I do not mistake them for a feast. My soul remembers the promise of wine and bread shared with a kindred soul under the same stars. It remembers a glimpse of home, though it has not yet been allowed to claim one, and yearns for it. I can only trust that it is somewhere ahead. 

Until then, I, too, will build altars out of stones. I will still sing by the fire. Because even as I am alone, I am.

 

Resurrection; Calibration

It began in the fog, the kind that rolls in after clarity has come and gone like a tide. I had rested, eaten, tended myself, but I was still uncertain. The flowers on my table were blooming, but my soul wasn’t quite convinced she was allowed to join them.

I listened, and thought I heard meadow sounds: crickets, birds, and the subtle hush of wind through long grasses. And for some reason, it opened something in me. Not all at once, but so quietly. As I started to draw, the ache I’ve known for years began to shift. Not disappear, not dissolve. Just… move. And I began to feel a strange warmth in my chest… which I confess felt like heartburn, but as somehow holy, because when I let myself melt into the moment I felt… her.

She was one who I remembered being behind me, but somehow I always knew and was envious that she was somehow further down the road than I’d been willing to go. But she’d been waiting. She sat cross-legged in the dust, barefoot and sketching on the edge of a book I used to own, sketching with fingers I used to use to wield my implements. There was a softness in her posture, like one perfectly settled in her own world… That strange, wild certainty I used to carry like breath. An assuredness that all would be well, all was within reach, all could be conquered.

It was me… but not yesterday’s me. Not the me who clawed her way out of grief or tangled herself in longing. She was… from before. Before the years that urged me to hide. Before I was taught to shrink. Before the detours and entrapments and trying to earn love by erasing myself. And I had not seen her in nearly twenty years.

And she looked up and smiled like she’d known I would come.

She didn’t scold me for taking so long. She didn’t ask where I’d been. She just held out her hand like she never stopped believing we’d walk again together. I don’t know how to describe the feeling of that moment except to say, it felt like a calibration. Something inside me clicked back into place— not perfectly, not completely, but with the kind of clarity that leaves no room for doubt.

I remembered how it felt to create without apology. To dream without flinching. To draw, to write, to believe. Nothing to run from, or to escape, nothing to prove. And for the first time in years, I didn’t feel the need to jump toward anyone else. No need for rescue.

Just… me.

But I have something to offer, too. Because what she didn’t know, and what I have had to learn, is that while all will be well, it never mattered how smart, how in love, how strong she could have been or thoughts she was, it would never be enough. I have learned that we are only ever complete in God, and through God, and that we have never been alone. This image of Eve, before the fall, this creature in Eden creating without pain, was One with Him, then, but did not truly see it. She let herself be convinced that she was incomplete without tasting every fruit, and only when it was too late were her eyes opened.

Through the cross, though… through His suffering, I am freed.