Standing at the Threshold

Learning to see the sacred in life’s in-between spaces

The harvesters came through this week and cut the corn.

For months the stalks stood all around the house, a green wall that turned to gold as they dried down. Walking the field road through the corn toward the floodplain and Piney Creek, I felt boxed in, as if I lived in a tunnel of stalks and sky.

Then in a single day they shelled the corn and the horizon opened wide. The smell of dried husks rose in the air, earthy with a surprising sweetness, and I felt something in me open too.

It was a threshold moment. The kind you don’t plan but stumble into. One instant you are closed in. The next, your world expands.

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What is a Threshold

The word threshold goes back to Old English for the doorsill, the place you cross as you step through. On the farm the threshing floor was a place for processing grain. A board was sometimes placed across the entrance to hold the grain in while people and animals trod and beat it out.

A threshold was never only wood underfoot or a line to step across. It was the place between holding and releasing. It was the edge where endings give way to beginnings, the moment when what was gathered is finally ready to be let go.

A threshold invites us to notice the crossing, and to trust that release opens into renewal.

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Liminal Spaces

Anthropologists call these crossings “liminal spaces”. It is the in-between zones where old patterns break down and new life hasn’t yet fully arrived.

You don’t have to be in a cornfield to notice them. Thresholds are everywhere. They can be found at the edge of a creek where the water deepens, the pause between sleeping and rising, or the slow shift when summer turns toward fall.

The animals notice them too. Deer move differently across the cleared field. Birds call sharper in the new openness. Even the coyotes adjust their paths overnight when the land changes.

These sacred spaces remind me that sanctuary isn’t a church building or a retreat center. It’s the practice of showing up fully in the places where life is shifting.

Being Present at the Crossing

Thresholds are not always dramatic. Sometimes they arrive quietly in the pause before you rise in the morning, the silence before speaking something honest, or the breath that carries you from the familiar into the unknown.

For me, breathwork has become one of these thresholds. Conscious connected breathing helps me release old patterns and step into new ways of seeing. Each session feels like a crossing. Its a reminder that transformation begins not with force but with breath and presence.

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Out the Door and On Your Way

Thresholds can feel uncertain. They ask us to loosen our grip, and to trust the sweetness in the air even when we don’t yet know what’s ahead.

David Whyte names this so clearly in his poem You Know When It’s Time to Go. His words carry the truth that the moment of hesitation is also the moment of invitation.

Here is the full poem, shared with gratitude and respect for his work:

You know
when it’s time to go:

that involuntary
sense
of hesitation
discovered
inside
what only looks
like your own body,

a hesitation
like a movement
in itself.

Your reluctance
to hear
the call
as much
an invitation
as if
a door
had opened

in the broad
heavens
and called
you through.

Your unwillingness
to hear the
birdsong
another kind
of listening,

and
the complete
inability
to speak

such a clear
and articulate
understanding
of what you
want.

Even in the midst
of thinking
you’ll
never be ready

even when
you feel
you have never
deserved
that freedom
to go

even under
the comforting
illusion
that you
never had

a single speck
of faith
in what you want

you have
already packed
your silent
reluctance away,
lifted your ear
to the morning
birdsong

and before
anyone
can wake

you are
out the door,
down the road
round the corner
and on your way.

— David Whyte, You Know When It’s Time to Go

Everything Is Waiting for You – David Whyte on Substack

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Keith Rowe is a breathworker, teacher, and founder of Vital Healing, a nonprofit that helps people reconnect with the wisdom of their heart through breathwork, somatic practice, and walking meditation.

He is co-creator of the upcoming Walking Pilgrim app, a 33-day journey of mindful walking and presence. Sign up for updates at walkingpilgrim.com.

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