The ‘before time’ is how many people refer to the pre-pandemic world we used to live in. We have not yet arrived in the ‘after times,’ in that post pandemic landscape. The pandemic itself is an extended threshold moment, a time between the known and the unknown. Moving across and through a threshold often ushers in a new way of being and belonging. Crossing a threshold can profoundly mark and shape us. Indeed, there is a collective, growing sense that humanity cannot return to ‘life as normal,’ because ‘life as normal,’ was violent, harmful and destructive to so many people and the planet itself. As a global community, we are at a threshold moment. 

And in our own faith community, we are in a threshold season. This month, we celebrate our Coming of Age Youth and Graduating Seniors. Rev. Justin preaches his last sermon. And together, we move gingerly into a future that is still forming, as we ourselves are formed by the thresholds we cross. 

This May, we will slow down long enough to notice and name the thresholds we are approaching and crossing. Together, we will wonder: “What changes when we cross a threshold? What remains the same? How long can we remain in the threshold space, the door between worlds wide open? What blessings do thresholds offer? And does religious community and spiritual practice help us prepare for the inevitable thresholds we will cross?”