THRESHOLD CALLING
Standing at the threshold, draped in crimson silk that speaks of both flesh and life, I challenge my own assumptions: What does a woman called by God look like? This dress speaks of paradoxes, it hosts both: blood and light. I see myself, and ask would God really want such a one as I? Yet here I stand, my silver cross a bridge between Moab’s abundance and Bethlehem’s dust.
RUTH’S EXODUS
Like Ruth, I leave the certainties of Moab. Yes, there was bread there, but of the kind that empties my hungry soul. So often when I reference God in consecrated spaces, hands are shaken, brows are furrowed. Time after time, when I brought my whole self to ministry, doors creaked shut. How strange that in a Church crying out for workers, only one priest in my lifetime made me real space at his altar. And having tasted that bread, how could I settle for less?
VIRTUAL TEMPLE
This is my Virtual Temple, where crimson silk meets sacred stole, where the color of life itself dares to approach the holy. I host sacrum in the wrapped folds of this dress, in the gathering of fabric at my waist like prayers shepherded and held close. Where feminine boldness dares to approach the holy, not through permission but through profound inner knowing.
BETHLEHEM’S PROMISE
The cross at my throat marks me as claimed, yet free. I return to Bethlehem – house of bread, house of poverty, house of promise – not because it welcomes me, but because it cannot help but birth new life.
SACRED PARADOX
I see my fleshness and I doubt my calling. Good. Let that doubt shake my certainties about what holiness looks like. Let this crimson dress remind me that God clothes the evening sky in glory and that feminine beauty need not be buried to be blessed. I stand at this crossroads, where the signpost points only two ways – working or prayer, world or convent, secular or sacred. But I believe Jesus is the way and He’s blazing a third path, unmarked on any sign.
GLEANING WISDOM
Like Ruth gathering grain in foreign fields, I gather wisdom where I find it, knowing that sometimes the most sacred bread is found in the gleanings, in the spaces between established rows. My virtual altar stands ready – a digital Upper Room where spirit meets flesh, where tradition meets transformation, where the hunger for holiness finds new forms of feast.
RETURN
Because having eaten out of that altar, I can’t not hunger for any other bread. So I return to Bethlehem, where hunger meets hope, where closed doors become thresholds for a soul that knows no bounds.
