I’ve long been drawn by the Celtic Christians’ awareness of thin places, moments or spaces where the veil between heaven and earth becomes more transparent.  Over the past 9 years I have personally experienced the sacredness  of Iona and Holy Island/Lindisfarne in Scotland and Northumbria and Glendaloch in Ireland where Christian seekers have communed with God for centuries.

Dallas Willard encourages us to recognize that  we live in two landscapes simultaneously, the landscape of the seen realm and the unseen landscape of God’s kingdom.  God is spirit Jesus reminds us and He is looking for worshippers who will worship Him in spirit and in truth.  (John 4:23)

LeAnne Payne described true imagination as the God given capacity for us as those who bear His image to see/perceive the unseen real.  God has gifted us to be able to see Him who is the ground of all reality and to attune ourselves to recognize His non-physical yet very real secure loving presence with us always.

My anthropological training has gifted me with an awareness of and appreciation for the thinness of transitions, whether they be seasons or life stages, where we are invited to move from one space or identity to another.  These are referred to as liminal spaces where we are invited to lean into the unsettling movement from what was to what is to come, sometimes even from an old identity to a new identity.

John O’Donohue beautifully captures the wonder and vulnerability of living into the liminal spaces where we find ourselves in his poem Thresholds:

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

~ John O’Donohue, “Benedictus” (“To Bless The Space Between Us” in the U.S.)

The transition from summer to autumn is an opportunity for each of us to recognize the personal thresholds in our own lives where God is wooing us and desiring to be with us in all the promise and uncertainties of the journeys before us.

Ignatius of Loyola saw these moments of transition whether daily or seasonal or major unique life events as beautiful opportunities to consciously attune to His movement and invitations in our lives.

As we live into the transition from summer to autumn here are some helpful prompts to help us attune to how God is with us right now right where we are.

1.  Settle in your imagination into a safe place where you can encounter God securely.  Curt Thompson has a wonderful, guided prayer exercise to help us settle into attunement with God through imaginative prayer.  Guided Prayer Exercise
2. As you linger with God in this safe secure space consider the following two prompts in dialogue with Him:
   1. Considering what you may be aware of God doing in your life right now, what might God be inviting you to in this new season?  What might be some steps you can begin to take to be in line with that?
   2. As you consider what Autumn may hold for you, how can you utilize the “community” to gain the support and resources you may need?  What support systems would help you to sustain and even grow in the areas God is speaking to you about?
   3.  As you reflect on what you wrote for the questions above, what is your prayer for the Fall?
   4. Following your prayer time consider sketching, painting, or finding images that tangibly depict the space you found yourself in with God as you spent this time together.

As we make this transition together I leave us with this reminder of the security of God’s love wherever we find ourselves from Julian of Norwich: “If anyone alive on earth be kept continually from falling, I know it not. For it was not showed to me. But this was showed: that in falling and in rising we are ever preciously kept in one love.”

May we all ever more deeply rest securely in the strong, secure loving embrace of God.