Threshold Prayer
i/
I bow to you, goddess-saint
you of two forms
two worlds
help me live my threshold life
half in half out
past always dragging at my thoughts
future filled with doubts
help me bear this liminal existence
find joy in my weariness
freedom in my grief
help me rise from the roughness of my path
join in the lilting waters of this life
ii/
I bow to you, goddess-saint
you of two forms
two worlds
thank you for my threshold life
no slave to one meaning one ideology
one view of any memory
free to see anew to draw astonished breath
at fresh and freeing insight
on this threshold, Brigit
I am not chained to who I was
but free to flow between this me and that
arriving at who I am this second
in this place with you
in this moment of wakefulness
in the joy of what is here
however simple
however small
how lucky I am to step above the threshold
not before and not after
but now
Performing the rite:
Choose a piece of cloth to symbolise Brigit's mantle and spread it out in the threshold of a doorway, part of it lying in one room and part of it lying in the next. Place the poem ahead of the mantle so that you can read it, and then bow to the mantle and to Brigit. Prostrate yourself, your full body stretched face down on the floor with your face on the mantle in the threshold, neither in nor out of either room.
Breathe quietly and become aware of your body and where it is; what you can feel on your skin, inside your body; your breath. When your thoughts wander, just keep returning to your body, and to Brigit, in this place.
As you lie on the floor, face down on her mantle, engage with the power and aliveness, the fertility and unfathomable age of Brigit's body, this earth. Allow these qualities to seep into you, till you are soaked throughout with them. Discover them already in you, who are a part of Brigit. Feel the difference it makes in you to share her endurance, her inextinguishability, her ability to destroy and transform and enliven herself again over and over for billions of years.
When you are ready, read or recite the threshold prayer, once, twice, or as many times, with as many reflections, as makes sense to you.
Rise and bow to the mantle and to Brigit, sovereign Goddess, protector of the land, the land herself. Keep your mantle and prayer somewhere nearby and visible so that when you have need, or daily, if you wish to build on this connection, you will be reminded of the rite.
[[OPTIONAL: I wouldn't recommend doing this all of the time, as it gets you into your head and we are trying to get out of there. But for certain situations this may be a useful step before your deep reading of the prayer:
[[Think very briefly (seconds — it doesn't have to be correct or exhaustive, just what comes to mind) of what thresholds mean for you, and what thresholds are prominent in your life right now. Then let those ideas go and return simply to your body, and to Brigit, in this place.]]
Images: 1) Pale green cloth with bee pattern is spread on floor in threshold. 2) Closeup of cloth. 3) The cloth is folded with the prayer in a small flat basket and hung on the wall just above the floor. Photos by Mael Brigde.
