Dear fellow traveler, and welcome to all who are new here!
I came across this photo of an old door today that I took on a pilgrimage to Italy several years ago. Something appealed to me. Was it the old layers peeling off? The beauty of the patina?
And is the paint peeling from the door or is the door freeing itself from all the accumulated layers of age, seeking its origin and source?
We are always quick to paint over. A fresh coat of paint, they say, and everything looks like new.
But what if the layers of the door could speak? Would they tell us tales from former times, of people who walked through the door, of conversation overheard, of kisses on the threshold?
What doors of life come to your mind? Doors guarding old memories, or doors to inner rooms long closed?
So here is my humble blessing for you today:
May you come to cherish
the many layers covering
the door of your heart.
May you find courage
to listen to their memories
the good and the bad
and the long forgotten.
Keep the good
bid farewell to the burdensome
dust off the flaking paint
from your heart’s door.
Let go of the old which longs to become dust
and cherish the patina of what is beneath.
…
Be the patina
Be the door
and the threshold.
***
May it be so. And may peace abound within you, Almut
PS: If you can, leave a heart, a word or a line which resonated with you in the comments, so we know you have been here :-)
In case you missed it
About Almut
Almut Furchert, Dr. phil., Dipl. Psych. is a German American scholar and practitioner, a psychologist turned philosopher turned writer, traveler, photographer, retreat leader and mother of a pre-schooler. She has taught and published on authors like Kierkegaard, Buber, Frankl, Yalom, Edith Stein, and Hildegard of Bingen. Almut is also a Benedictine Oblate and lives with her family in a little college town in MN.
Thank you for reading, sharing and supporting Cloister Notes, a letter for dancing monks, weary pilgrims and wounded healers in the intersection of psychology, philosophy and spirituality. If you have been moved by my writing please consider becoming a sustaining member to make this labor of love possible and keep it accessible to all. Thank you, thank you.
Subscribed
If you do not want to receive further (mid)weekly blessings you can manage your subscription here.
I hope I can have the courage to continually live as the door that is aged, characterized, and has been through the grind! Yes, I will always be making my self new as I grow and expand, but my character and my genuineness will continually be revealed as I shed layers to what is the deepest and truest part of myself! May the door symbolize us all, we are all perfectly worn in perfect timing!
"But what if the layers of the door could speak? Would they tell us tales from former times, of people who walked through the door..." I often wonder the same out at the lighthouse. Years and layers of flaking paint inside and out. I scraped the flaking paint from our interior boathouse doors two summers ago. Not likely as old as Italian doorways, but 113 years of stories and secrets to be uncovered. The more time I spend out there, the more I hope they will be whispered to me.