One morning when we still lived on the farm, I looked out the front window and saw the barn door was open. A horse was standing by the corn crib not 10 feet from the road. It wasn’t my horse, but still I had that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
We had rented out a stall to an Amish neighbor to board his horses for a month while he was doing some logging nearby. He paid the rent with several loads of firewood. As a bonus he spread some of that high-octane Percheron exhaust on the garden, so it was a good deal all around.
The neighbor arrived within a few minutes to tend to the wayward horse, so it all ended well. But that sinking feeling brought back memories of all those times in my youth when somebody left a door or a gate unlocked and the cows got out – usually onto the road and almost always at the most inconvenient time. Chasing cows at three o’clock in the morning is not fun, especially when your school bus is due to arrive at 7 a.m.
We came home recently after being gone all day to discover the patio doors off the dining room were wide-open. The wooden doors warp in the winter and we had forgotten to turn the bolt lock. Again there was that sinking feeling as I realized that we had put ourselves at risk. It frightens us when we discover that we’ve left a door open, and yet an open door can sometimes be our salvation.
Psychiatrist and spiritual-writer Thomas Moore says that in psychotherapy with his clients, he has heard many dreams of doors left ajar and windows cracked open.
“The dreamer was deathly afraid of who or what might come in because of this negligence, and of course as a therapist I suspected that whoever it was, was probably someone useful or necessary,” he said.
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