Doors can protect, invite or lead to the future

Isometimes just sit and look at the things around me. This is a relaxing pastime, but it is also somewhat disturbing because I see so many things that need to be done. We live on two acres on which sets our more than 30-year-old house. Everything needs a little attention - -- a bit of repairing and painting here or some trimming and seeding there. I notice these things and I think I ought to get busy and take care of some of them. But, now in my mid 70s, I find it is easier to just sit and look at things and think --- not just about what I ought to be doing, but about things in general.

Just now, I have been looking at the doors on my greenhouse and small shop. These doors are made out of windows that some years ago were removed from Topeka High School. With the new replacement windows installed, these windows were stored in a warehouse and I was able to purchase them for next to nothing because they were taking up space better used for something more worthwhile. This was after I retired from employment with the Topeka public schools and I wanted to build a greenhouse and shop. The old windows were perfect for this project. We used them in the greenhouse, but we also fastened two window frames together to make the doors for the greenhouse and the shed. So, these doors have special meaning for me. They remind me of my days as a teacher and counselor at Topeka High School. I wonder if these are the very windows I used to look out from as I worked with students there.

In my reverie, I think of doors in general --- not just these doors, but doors down through history. When did people first use doors? I recall from my reading that anthropologists tell us the door as we know it today is more than 25,000 years old. I wonder how mankind came to make and use the first door. Maybe some cave dweller, tired of protecting his earthly possessions from wild beasts or raiding clans, pushed a slab of stone across his cavern entrance, sealing off the outside world --- and the first door was born.

In our own national history, the American pioneer housewife hid her children behind the thick batten door in her isolated cabin, barring it to protect her children from some intruding stranger. And even today, millions of Americans find security at night behind the locked doors of their homes. The door always has been a protector of lives.

Perhaps this is the symbolism Jesus intended when, according to the Scriptures, He said, "I am the door, if anyone enters by me, he will be saved." He certainly was using a universally well-known symbol to describe himself. Protection or security is implied. Those who enter will be "saved" --- will "go in and out" and "find pasture." Choice is implied ---"if anyone enters," he said. In other words, we can open it and choose to enter, or we can hesitate or refuse to enter. But the promise is that those who enter will have life more abundantly --- and life eternal.

In this sense, a door is an invitation and an opportunity. Religious faith aside, I have learned in life that opening the right door at the right time often means success. Conversely, sometimes we open the wrong door and suffer dire consequences. Not everyone will dare to open a door. The door has been a barrier to the timid. A closed door or a door opening to the unknown causes the fearful to hesitate, to stop and to turn away. Hesitation in opening the right door --- especially the door opening on opportunities to help another --- often has led to regrets later. I am reminded of this bit of verse:

I never cut my neighbor's throat,

My neighbor's purse I never stole;

I never spoiled his house or land,

But God have mercy on my soul!

For I am haunted night and day

By all the deeds I have not done,

That attempted loveliness,

Or costly valor, never won.

Then, there are secret doors. History tells of secret doors that were made to look like part of the wall itself and were used for a fleeing tyrant or a good king under siege to make a safe escape. I well remember that in many of the old cowboy and mystery movies there was such a secret door, usually used by the "bad" guy for escape and discovered upon close inspection or accident by the "good" guy. It may have been the child in me that caused me to design a secret door for our son's bedroom when we built our house, and it is there yet today.

One door that always stands out in my mind is the door in Auntie Em's house in the movie "The Wizard of 0z." Down on the farm in Kansas, that door opens out onto a world of black and white --- a rather drab world. But then, the cyclone comes and sends the house whirling off into the sky to the land of Oz. When Dorothy rouses from her daze, climbs off her bed and opens the door, she looks out into a technicolor world --- beautiful and serene --- a make-believe world. And she says something like, "Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore!"

That is what happens when we open a door --- we can step through it to enter worlds previously unknown. Open doors represent opportunities for the realization of great expectations and good fortune if we dare to step through and opportunities for a different and more expansive view of things.

I take a lingering look at the doors on my greenhouse and shop. I think of the opportunities the windows from which they are made presented to me as I worked with those high school students in days long gone by. I also see that I probably should go down there, get my plane and shave a little off the corners so the doors will close better. So what? I would rather sit here in reflection and think about the doors of history and the doors I have opened or left unopened. But, it is time to go into the house now. One clear thought remains. I have long believed that opportunity stands outside an open door.

Where did I get that idea? I remember my old prose and poetry textbook from my own high school days. There were some lines there that I remember now. I take the time to locate the book and open it to see if I can find them.

There they are! They read:

"Opportunity"

By Walter Malone

They do me wrong who say I come no more

When once I knock and fail to find you in;

For every day I stand outside your door,

And bid you wake, and rise to fight and win.

Wail not for precious chances passed away,

Weep not for golden ages on the wane! Each night I burn the records of the day ---

_At sunrise every soul is born again!

Laugh like a boy at splendors that have sped,

To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb;

My judgments seal the dead past with its dead,

But never bind a moment yet to come.

Though deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep;

I lend my arm to all who say "I can!"

No shamefaced outcast ever sank so deep,

But yet might rise and be again a man!

Dost thou behold thy lost youth all aghast?

Dost reel from righteous Retribution's blow?

Then turn from blotted archives of the past,

And find the future's pages white as snow.

Art thou a mourner? Rouse thee from thy spell;

Art thou a sinner? Sins may be forgiven;

Each morning gives thee wings to flee from hell,

Each night a star to guide thy feet to heaven.

James Coder is a retired minister, educator and counselor who lives in Elmont, in northern Shawnee County. He is a regular columnist for Kansas/Plus.

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