A threshold

Beauty is about more rounded, substantial becoming

Hi all,

I’ve spent the past week sorting through boxes I packed two and a half years ago, when my last life came to a close, and which then sat for years in a garage in Southern California. I’ve been remembering who I was then, and preparing for who I’m becoming.

Today, I’ll be driving across country with a removals van following behind, and by tonight, all my books will be under one roof, for the first time in 13 years.

You could say it’s a threshold.

I haven’t had time to write much this past week, so I’m sharing one of my favourite podcasts, which I listen to over and over. Perhaps I’ve shared it before—I wouldn’t be surprised. For me, this talk has been a bright light in the darkest of days, and it bears infinite repeating. Here’s John O’Donohue on On Being. Below is a transcript of his beautiful, life-giving thoughts on thresholds, from this conversation.

Normal service will resume next week!

xx Ellie

John O’Donohue, before his death in 2008

John O’Donohue on thresholds

O’Donohue: I think in our culture one of the things we are missing is that these thresholds where we […] move into new change in our lives, there are no rituals to help us to recognize them or to cross them worthily.

Tippett: And “threshold” is a word you use a great deal in your book on beauty, as well.

O’Donohue: ’Tis, yeah.

Tippett: And what is that relationship between beauty and thresholds?

O’Donohue: Well, I think that the threshold, if you go back to the etymology of the word “threshold,” it comes from “threshing,” which is to separate the grain from the husk. So the threshold, in a way, is a place where you move into more critical and challenging and worthy fullness.

And I think there are huge thresholds in every life. I mean, I think that, for instance — to give a very simple example of it is that if you are in the middle of your life in a busy evening, 50 things to do, and you get a phone call that somebody that you love is suddenly dying, it takes 10 seconds to communicate that information. But when you put the phone down, you are already standing in a different world, because suddenly, everything that seemed so important before is all gone, and now you are thinking of this. So the given world that we think is there, and the solid ground we are on, is so tentative, and I think a threshold is a line which separates two territories of spirit. And I think that, very often, how we cross is the key thing.

Tippett: And where is beauty in that?

O’Donohue: Where beauty is, I think, is — beauty isn’t all about just nice loveliness, like. Beauty is about more rounded, substantial becoming. And I think when we cross a new threshold, that if we cross worthily, what we do is we heal the patterns of repetition that were in us that had us caught somewhere. And in our crossing, then, we cross onto new ground where we just don’t repeat what we’ve been through in the last place we were. So I think beauty in that sense is about an emerging fullness, a greater sense of grace and elegance, a deeper sense of depth, and also a kind of homecoming for the enriched memory of your unfolding life.