Our 2024 – 2025 annual spiritual theme is “Join the Journey,” and this month we are exploring the topic of threshold. It is a fitting theme for January when we cross the threshold of a new year; a point in time which feels pregnant with potential. What will 2025 bring to our lives? What can we bring to 2025?
Now, I know that some of you (likely many of you) are feeling some level of dread about our country’s presidential transition. Given the threats the incoming president has made against immigrants and LGBTQ2SIA identified folks, as well as anyone who disagrees with him, this is understandable. However, that is not all the year ahead holds.
If we are willing to move together across a threshold of strengthening our relationships of mutual care and commitment within our church and beyond our church, then this year also can hold opportunities to learn and grow, to develop networks that help people survive and thrive, and build more pockets of hope, understanding, and liberation.
January may feel like a time of mourning, and we do anticipate and will need to name the losses on the horizon. We may also be on the threshold of something new emerging that will be more resilient and lifegiving.
Arlen Goff writes, “Each threshold offers an opportunity for change, for renewal, for transformation, from what we were and what we are to what we can be.” This can be a true statement, whether we are crossing a threshold that we desire or one that we would prefer to resist or never experience.
In the beginning of 2025, what are the thresholds that you hope to cross on the journey of your life? How can you move more fully toward them? What do you need to be able to cross to the other side?
What are the thresholds you are resisting at this moment in time? What are the thresholds that have been thrust upon you that you hoped never to cross? What do you need to promote more grace and grit, more resilience as you move through an unwanted season?
Do you have ideas about how our spiritual community can support you or others in this time of promise and change, and in this time of potential danger and potential renewal?
We are people who, in our meaning-making, make community connections, and make a difference within and beyond our walls. What thresholds can we cross with greater possibilities and/or strength, if we cross them together?
Here are a couple of upcoming possibilities:
1.) January – Join one of the antiracism learning circles, which begin this month. Here is where you can find out more and register:
2.) February – Join a building your own theology class for young adults in their 20s & 30s with Rev. Alison, kicking off in February
3.) March – Join Jen Thomas and Jody Feldman for a special antiracism book read for all our hospitality folks.
May 2025 be a year where we move across the thresholds before us with greater meaning, grounded purpose, and growing joy.
In faith,
Rev. Alison