My friend has just moved house, leaving farmlands and the drone of the harvester for life in the city. It’s an emotional journey closing the door behind you, leaving all that’s familiar and opening a new door to the next chapter of life. Strange how a door can be both a symbol of endings and beginnings, of loss and gain, pain and joy.
Its what’s behind the door that’s important, whether its a door into a home, a relationship or a career.
I found it in a tiny mud brick home in the middle of the desert in Burkina Faso, kindness, generosity and joy … a door of hospitality opened as wide as the ocean, by folk who had precious little other than a dwindling store of grain.
I’ve experienced it in relationship when someone has opened the door from the inside and poured themselves into my life sacrificially, not counting the cost, and I’ve felt loved and nourished.
Ralph Waldo Emerson encourages us to “Be an opener of doors” ... to invite people into our home, our life and our heart ... to be hospitable in every sense of the word.
Someone said, “Life is a house of a thousand doors”. A child is born and we discover a door into the most difficult and joyous adventure we could ever have imagined; a loved one dies or a relationship breaks down and we walk through deep grief, heartache and despair or like my friend we close one door and open another and with it a whole new beginning … each in its own way is an invitation to know ourselves more intimately.