Dear Friends ~ When I first encountered the term "Threshold Time," I pictured Lucy Pevensie before the wardrobe, poised to encounter an entirely unseen world. My beautiful friend had invited me into her family's Día de los Muertos celebration, where she described the week straddling October and November as a time when the "veil" separating the living and spirit worlds feels thinner, and therefore more permeable. I'd always understood, in theory, that we remain connected to others even after they've died, but my friend's tradition had a grounding effect. I could touch a table laid with warm food – material matter. As if the honored guests had knocked on the front door and hung their coats in the entryway.
The possibility that these two distinct worlds can draw closer to one another exists in many spiritual traditions, of course. It brings to mind a poem Wendell Berry wrote not long before he himself slipped behind that veil:
The loved ones we call the dead
depart from us and for a while
are absent. And then as if
called back by our love, they come
near us again. They enter our dreams...
~ Wendell Berry, lines from "The Loved Ones," in The New Yorker Magazine, November 17, 2025
In the often harried and uncertain realm of the living, there is great comfort in knowing we are accompanied by friends and teachers in both worlds. "For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love," Carl Sagan observed in his novel CONTACT, reckoning with the human need for belonging and connection.
The architecture of my Anabaptist upbringing was sturdy and unadorned: cinderblock halls painted white and accordion-style vinyl walls that could be snapped together in endless room configurations in the church basement. The closest things we had to anything resembling veils were the red velvet drapes hanging across the bell closet in the choir room. It was a spot that lent itself well to Hide-and-Seek for the handful of kids waiting on their parents after an evening meeting. Whoever was "It" would have followed the muffled giggles and insistent shushes to that closet. They would have pawed at the curtains, determined to discover whoever waited behind the fabric.
Standing as we are in this Threshold Time of early November, we too are like "seekers" leaning in, listening for the voices of our companions that arise from the silence on either side of the thinned veil. It can be an elusive business, Mary Oliver reminds us, but ultimately illuminating and life-giving:
I will sing for the veil that never lifts.
I will sing for the veil that begins, once in a lifetime,
maybe, to lift.
I will sing for the rent in the veil.
I will sing for what is in front of the veil, the
floating light.
I will sing for what is behind the veil –
light, light and more light.
This is the world, and this is the work of the world.
~ Mary Oliver, lines from "Work," in THE LEAF AND THE CLOUD
We at Friends of Silence are grateful to belong to this contemplative community that connects through words and poetry each month. And this issue is offered in remembrance of the ones each of us has loved and lost, honoring the light they've left shining for us on this side of the veil. ~ Joy
In order to create, I must be still.