But I did find precisely the definitions I sought by shifting the point from which I had been trying to view the threshold itself. Indeed, in conjunction with my frequently used means of finding out precisely what it is that I think and believe through untangling thoughts on paper, or keyboard and screen, it had been focussing on this threshold that clarified my reasons for “knowing” (that same inner feeling of knowing without any certainty of why) that I am not one who is being called to train for the diaconate.
The definitions were found on BusinessDictionary.com – a name that turned my train of thought from matters previously kept too separate from the underlying values and driving forces of today’s material world, and forced the two sides to confront each other. The threshold between the two was transformed from being an almost imperceptibly thin line to an expanse broad enough to be seen as a territory in its own right.
Though the line had been so fine, it had always been distinct and recognized as an undeniable reality. It demonstrated the profound implications and importance of the one decision that could and would carry a person from the one side to the other: from laity to the ordained membership of a hierarchical structure claiming all authority, and expecting conformity and obedience as part of its control of the institution calling itself “The Church”.
The broader expanse did nothing to reduce the clarity or the relevance of the decision, but it did suggest that there was a great deal of room for further thought about the nature and the relevance of the threshold today; there was no longer a knife edge on which it was impossible to balance, and the crossing of which could be easily accomplished by making the necessary decision; where one was either on one side or the other.
Instead, the broadness invited lateral thinking: a reassessment reaching into whichever spheres of life might be necessary to find answers enough to fill the previously undiscovered space; but the required thoughts did not come simply because the need for them had been recognized. The only way I found myself able to profitably view the apparently altered landscape was to forget that the threshold was there at all: to regard the laity, the ordained hierarchy and this newfound expanse between the two as three equal, individually definable but inseparably interrelated fields: parts of one indivisible whole.
As soon as this picture formed it became clear that I should see the image as one of the Church as an expression of the Blessed Trinity – something I had not been able to see before.
What had been absorbed gradually throughout my life, becoming my instinctive, unquestioned, and undoubted way of seeing the Church: Christ’s Church, with the Spirit of God forever falling, drifting and blowing into and through every single corner of it, had given rise to the fine line separating the two parts, ordained and laity. Jesus and the Holy Spirit were both present throughout, with the threshold not only delineating the separation resulting from ordination, but also being the manifestation of a tension created by the underlying tug-of-war going on as a result of the Church having been split down the middle. The numerical minority, reserving all the authority and power on the one side; the majority – the sheep – who are clearly in need of someone to lead them, and who can be so easily and unquestioningly led along wrong paths, on the other.
This almost entirely automatic way of seeing the Church had been replaced by a different understanding based on the (once again) questionable reliability of “feelings”; an inner recognition of something which seemed to lack any clear supportive evidence.
