Liminality. It's delicious to say. I knew what liminality felt like, but I never knew the textbook definition until the last couple of years.
According to all-knowing (wink) Wikipedia, liminality ... "In anthropology, liminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning "a threshold")[1] is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition the status they will hold when the rite is complete.[2]
Liminality is a person standing at their college graduation ceremony. Or a couple getting married on their wedding day.
Or humanity living during a global pandemic.
Kate and/or Jessica quote anthropologist Victor Turner who says that liminality is like being at a threshold - lifting your foot up to enter a room but before you put it down on the other side. "We are at a threshold - something still becoming - but we don't know yet what all the factors are, and how to frame them. We yearn for normalcy only to find that liminality has become our 'new normal'" (p 210).
We can be in-between all kinds of things:
- Relationships
- Seasons of independence and dependence
- Jobs
- Friends
- The diagnosis and the cure
- Feeling courageous and feeling afraid
- The life we have ... and the life we want
When you're in a liminal space or time, you're unsettled. And a little lost. Feeling a little exposed and vulnerable as you wait for what's next.
And maybe instead of rushing ahead to "what's next," maybe it's better to linger in the liminality for just a little bit longer.
"Instead of trying to escape it, let us settle there for the moment. Knowing and trusting we aren't alone. We're in this strange middle place ... together" (p 211).
Kate and Jessica point out that liminality is all a part of losing our life for Jesus's sake: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it." (Matthew 10:37-39)
Blessed are we, somewhere unnameable, fully present to our reality. Tracking it, with all its subtle gradations and colors and contrasts, the sweetness and the struggle, the stuck and not-quite fitting. (p 212)
Pastor Allison
I'm curious:
Liminality is uncomfortable, to be sure. But Kate and Jessica advocate recognizing it when it happens and lingering there for just a bit.
In their "A Good Enough Step" on page 213, they write, "For one hour, consent to the in-between. Nestle right in there, not knowing anything for sure. Crazy, isn't it? That's not where we are comfortable. But try it for one solid hour. No strainging for answers. Not pushing to land on an idea. Or solve a problem. See if a poem or song fits. ... (They suggest trying Psalm 131.)
"And if you do happen to get a nudge where something becomes clear, a just-noticeable difference - sometimes the shift comes sideways, the truth that something has changed - receive it. And if not, just read awhile in the unknowing. Because someday we will see things as they really are. You can count on it" (pp 213-214).
No comments:
Post a Comment