Doorways. Thresholds. Doorposts. We pass through them constantly, but do we ever stop to think about these commonplace aspects of our homes? In fact, doorways can be an effective tool for addressing the biggest obstacle to building your domestic church or Trinity House: bridging the gap between the vision for our family life that’s in our minds and hearts and the reality of life on the ground in our homes.

With this in mind, let’s look at the Grand Central Station of a Trinity House – the Household Economy. If we are building communion with God and our family members (or even just thinking about it!) and we want that love to result in a rich family culture that we can share with our neighbors, first it needs to all come together in a well-functioning home life where the family’s basic needs are met.

And this is where things get tricky. Access to God’s life of grace may be building up as healthy people and relationships develop, but how do we bring that growing communion into the very real places in which we live out our lives? Enter “the Doorway Effect.” Have you ever stood up from your chair in one room and set off to do something one or two rooms away, only to find yourself asking when you arrive, “Wait…what was it I came here to do?”

The phenomenon we experience in this moment of seeming forgetfulness actually has a name. “The Doorway Effect,” explains journalist Tom Stafford, “occurs because we change both the physical and mental environments, moving to a different room and thinking about different things.” In other words, passing through a doorway can lead to a moment of openness, giving us an opportunity to reset our orientation. So, let’s take advantage of this common action and put it to use in building up our Trinity House.

When we’re going about our day-to-day business, we can use the physical structure of our home to translate our vision for our family life into the real world. How? Each time we pass through a doorway, we can think of passing through Christ and his cross and into the sheepfold, his safe pasture. We can remind ourselves, “I enter this room into greater union with Christ to live as he did, to love God and others as myself.” By doing this, we can put the frequent resetting of our physical and mental environments to work as a trigger to achieve our highest goals.

Perhaps for a while, you can even tape a Trinity icon holy card to the most-frequented doorways in your house, and lovingly touch a finger to it as you pass by, crossing yourself in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Those who have participated in our workshop know that this icon is a symbol of interpersonal communion, the life of God, and the heart of a Trinity House, which is gained by loving others as God has loved us, by sacrificing for them as Christ did for us on the cross.

Of course, God was the first to come up with this idea to help his family put their faith into practice. The Hebrew word for doorpost is mezuzah, and to this day, observant Jews attach a small box to the doorframe. The practice goes back millennia to the command to “write the words of God on the gates and doorposts of your house” (Dt. 6:9).

In the mezuzah is a piece of paper with the verse, “Hear O Israel: the Lord is one, the Lord our God is one” (Dt. 6:4). The reference to the reading of the ten commandments before God’s people were to cross into the promised land reminded the family to follow God’s way of life. “When passing through a doorway where a mezuzah has been affixed,” explains a Hasidic Jewish author, “we glance at it and touch it. Some people then kiss their fingertips. This serves as a reminder throughout the day that [God] is always with us, inside or outside our homes.” Christians, too, can put this ancient wisdom into practice, allowing the Doorway Effect to reorient us toward God’s way of life, tapping into the law of God’s love for us and our families. When we stack a powerful momentary prayer on top of a pre-existing habit of going from room to room, our families will undoubtedly be blessed by new expressions of our love.

What the world needs right now are men, women and children who avail themselves of every opportunity—right down to the mundane act of walking into a room—to say, “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God” (I Jn. 4:7).