To Walk Through A Doorway
Hope McGovern
It is never an innocuous thing to walk through a doorway.
There must have been a choice, a decision to leave behind
one backdrop in favor of another. You must go this way or
that, fall on only one side of the threshold. To enter through
a doorway means to leave the place you were before. The
Ancient Romans personified this notion with Janus—the two-
faced god of transitions, the keeper of doorways. In him was
both life and death, war and peace, past and future. He was
the door.
But there is never just one door. Each junction begets another,
and so the journey begins. As if in a labyrinth, we know not
whether a single choice will bring us to our end or reveal us
again to the expectant sunlight. Where do we end up? Many
go down to Egypt, searching for milk and honey, but find
only chains. Some make their way step-by-step to Babylon,
steeped in riches bought by the
Maybe paradise will
exploitation of the weak. Most,
not be ignorant of
though, just sit and wait for
Godot beside the same broken pain, but replete with
wells. But none find their way agony that has been
back to the high places of the felt to the full and then
Garden.
mended at its source.
Has the path to paradise been lost? We have stumbled in the
dark long enough—if only we could find the right door, we
might return to a former state of innocence. We step with
tired feet into traditions of shame, hoping moral austerity will
guide us back to paradise. We linger at each mirage, desperate
to espy the shape of a fruit tree. Or, stubbornly, we declare
paradise has always been all around us, never mind the dark
and cold. At each threshold we ready ourselves, sure that this
path will lead to the light. But the object of our reaching eludes
our grasping hands, and we never grow less weary. Shall we
walk backwards, retrace our steps through each doorway until
chaos recedes and we walk in the Garden without shame once
again?
Or perhaps we have only thought we knew what paradise
would look like. Perhaps paradise will not look like tears that
have never been cried, but tears that have been wiped away
by loving hands. Maybe paradise will not be ignorant of pain,
but replete with agony that has been felt to the full and then
mended at its source. Perhaps it is not a garden at all to which
we go, but a gleaming city on a hill. Our paradise lies ahead,
not behind.
Another says, “I am the Door” (John 10:9, ESV), though
He does not wear two faces. Through His door is only life,
only peace, only a future awash with light. Leaving behind
the labyrinth of Sheol, we Passover from death to life and set
out on a path for the Celestial City. The way is narrow, but
if we will only pass through the Bloodied doorway, we will
reach it. All that remains, then, is to cross the final threshold.
Therefore, seeker, enter in.
“‘What are we born for?’
‘For infinite happiness,’ said the Spirit. ‘You can step out into it at any
moment...’”
-C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
Hope McGovern '19 graduated with a degree in Engineering Physics.
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