Opening our doors

[Written in 2014. Shared for the first time here.]

From its very birth we have been using the door to form for ourselves a new womb, a place to stay safe and warm in body. It has been a medium to grasp the shadowy world beyond, through story and analogy. It gives a child safety when fleeing to their room and hiding under the covers with it closed. It seems, for us all, to incarnate a provisional constancy of sorts.

But, lately in our world, perhaps the door has become a wall, not this temporary barrier closed in time of storm to be reopened when calm has returned. Rather, it seems the door has become a barrier to everything and anything all the time, a place we hide our vulnerabilities from one another, soothing ourselves from the lurking dangers out there.

There is talk of children not going outside, not playing in the streets, local parks are lonely, bicycle sales are down, but with this great thing dividing the “out there” from the “inside” isn’t there an irony that adults can take control of?

There usually is a good reason for inventions, some need fulfilled or a task lightened, but then come the dragons of misuse and overuse. Interior climate controls and a well insulated home are wonderful inventions; easing our life and even simplifying it, so that we can concentrate on the more ethereal ways. Is there reason, though, to hermetically seal a home on a breezy summer evening, with the lilac and the rustling of leaves floating about? Is there good reason to keep the face of our home tight in early spring when the whole earth outside is waking up and knocking at its winter shell?

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