Liminal Space

Gregg’s Reflection

As I reflect on my life, I see major transitions every 10 years:

1959 Moved from apartments to our home

1969 Graduated High School, met & married Genie, Joined family business, had our two children

1979 Baptized

1989 Father dying

1999 Sold the business

2009 Came to City Church, found the vehicle for my calling

2019 Moved to Colorado

With each of these journeys through Liminal Space, I have grown deeper trust in God. Each ushered in significant change, and the anxiety most of us experience with change. With our move to Colorado in 2019, I was not anxious about what came next, just curious. And I have seen things unfold in a way that further affirms that trust. See why wisdom tells us change is integral to our spiritual journey.

Scripture

Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. Isaiah 43:18-19

And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. 2 Corinthians 3:18

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 2 Corinthians 5:17

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:6-7

You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Ephesians 4:22-24

Ancient Writings

What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.

Lao-Tzu

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.

Rumi

Change is the only constant in life.

Heraclitus

Modern Writings

Everybody wants to change the world, but nobody thinks about changing himself.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is that they must change if they are to get better.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

If your religion does not change you, then you had better change your religion.

Elbert Hubbard

Be the change you seek.

Mahatma Gandhi

If you feel you are anxiously floating in the in between, perhaps you are in the Liminal Space. The word comes from the Latin ‘Limens’ which means ‘threshold.’ It is when you have left the tried and true, but have not yet been able to replace it with something else...waiting on a new normal. Embrace the mystery and power of transition from what has been to what will be.

Dr. Barbara Holmes, Universal Christ Conference, CAC, 3/19

Transitions can only take place if we are willing to let go of what we have known, the worlds we have created, and our assumptions about “how things are.” To let go is the precursor to being reborn.

Barbara A. Holmes, Crisis Contemplation: Healing the Wounded Village, p. 46–47. 

What some call “liminal space” or threshold space (in Latin, limen means a threshold) is a very good phrase for those special times, events, and places that open us up to the sacred. It seems we need special (sacred) days to open us up to all days being special and sacred. This has always been the case and didn’t originate with Christianity. Ancient initiation rites were intensely sacred time and space that sent the initiate into a newly discovered sacred universe. We are in liminal space whenever past, present, and future time come together in a full moment of readiness. We are in liminal space whenever the division between “right here” and “over there” is obliterated in our consciousness.

Richard Rohr, CAC Morning Devo, 3/8/21

We have to allow ourselves to be drawn into sacred space, into liminality. All transformation takes place here. There alone is our old world left behind, though we’re not yet sure of the new existence. That’s a good space where genuine newness can begin.

Richard Rohr, CAC Morning Devo, 8/26/23

The Latin word limen means “threshold.” Liminal space is an inner state and sometimes an outer situation where we can begin to think and act in new ways. It is where we are betwixt and between, in transition, having left one room or stage of life but not yet entered the next. We usually enter liminal space when our former way of being is challenged or changed—perhaps when we lose a job or a loved one, during illness, at the birth of a child, or a major relocation. It is a graced time, but often does not feel “graced” in any way. In such space, we are not certain or in control.  

The very vulnerability and openness of liminal space allows room for something genuinely new to happen. We are empty and receptive—blank tablets waiting for new words. Liminal space is where we are most teachable, often because we are most humbled. Liminality keeps us in an ongoing state of shadowboxing instead of ego-confirmation, struggling with the hidden side of things, and calling so-called normalcy into creative question. It’s no surprise then that we generally avoid liminal space. Much of the work of authentic spirituality and human development is to get people into liminal space and to keep them there long enough that they can learn something essential and new.

Richard Rohr,  Adam’s Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation, p. 135–138. 

Thoughts on Thresholds…..

From Christine Valters Painter, The Soul’s Slow Ripening:

Thresholds are the space between, when we move from one time to another, as in times of inner or outer journeying or pilgrimage; and one awareness to another, as in times when when our old structures start to fall away and we begin to build something new.  The Celts describe thresholds as “thin times or places” where heaven and earth are closer together and the veil between worlds is thin.

The ancient Celts used to have “threshold stones” at the entrance to a sacred site, one on either side of the portal or passageway.

Thresholds are liminal times when the past season has come to a close but there is a profound unknowing of what will come next.

Thresholds are challenging because they demand that we step into the in-between place of letting go of what has been while awaiting what is still to come.  When we are able to fully release our need to control the outcome, thresholds become rich and graced places of transformation. We can only become something new when we have released the old faces we have been wearing, even if it means not knowing quite who we are in the space between.

From John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us:

At any time you can ask yourself: At which threshold am I now standing? At this time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter? What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold?

A threshold is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms, and atmospheres.  Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience or a stage of life that it intensifies toward the end into a real frontier that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up.”

Holy Pausing

In the monastic tradition, statio is the practice of stopping one thing before beginning another. It is the acknowledgment that in the space of transition and threshold is a sacred dimension, a holy pause full of possibility. This place between is a place of stillness, where we let go of what came before and prepare ourselves to enter fully into what comes next.  When we pause between activities or spaces or moments in our days, we open ourselves to the possibility of discovering a new kind of presence to the darkness of in-between times. When we rush from one thing to another, we skim over the surface of life, losing the sacred attentiveness that brings forth revelations in the most ordinary of moments.  Statio calls us to a sense of reverence for slowness, for mindfulness, and for the fertile dark spaces between our goals where we can pause and center ourselves, and listen. We can open up a space within for God to work. We can become fully conscious of what we are about to do rather than mindlessly completing another task. See if the threshold helps call forth the thinness of this moment, making the voice of the divine more accessible. 

Christine Valters Paintner, The Soul’s Slow Ripening: 12 Celtic Practices for Seeking the Sacred, p. 9, 8.