Living in the “Liminal” Time

“Liminal” — A Great Word

I like words.  Though I’m aware that this love of vocabulary can sometimes seem pretentious or pedantic, I find it difficult to control.  Obscure words just seem to pop into my head in normal conversation.  In general, I’m ok with that.  

Given my tendency, I was pleased during Sunday School to encounter the rare but delightful word, “liminal.”  What a great word!  Webster’s defines it as “of, relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase, or condition : IN-BETWEEN, TRANSITIONAL.” In our chaotic lives, we often tend to inhabit liminal times when we are in transition from one status to another.  I remember as a kid the Summers being such times.  Was I still a third grader or had I moved on to fourth grade?  Or later, when I was in college, was I an adult or still an adolescent?  When I was engaged to my future wife, what exactly was my marital status?  Was I still single?

Unsettling

Liminal points in our lives can be a bit unsettling.  Periods of unemployment disrupt things from time to time.  Tragedy or disaster can thrust us into difficult periods of uncertainty, requiring us to cope in new ways.  Illness throws a wrench into even the best laid plans.

While the liminal periods can be unexpected, some of them are actually chosen by us.  They may even be happy times.  We may decide to go on vacation or on a sabbatical.  We may take some time to plan and launch a new business or career.  We may go back to school to learn a new trade.  These too are liminal spaces.

Every liminal time requires us to rethink how we will live.  Inhabiting the former way of living is no longer an option.  But neither are we able to fully live into the life we anticipate.  It’s true that some liminal times are well structured and advice is readily available as to how to navigate them.  (Think of college.)  But there are times when we feel like Dante at the beginning of his Divine Comedy.

Midway upon the journey of our life

I found myself within a forest dark,

For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say

What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,

Which in the very thought renews the fear.

The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri (trans. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

Every liminal time requires a rethinking of how we should live–not only in the coming anticipated time when things are more settled again, but in the liminal time itself.

The Church and Liminal Time

As I’ve had occasions to reflect on liminal times, it has occurred to me that the Church, and by extension every Christian since Christ’s ascension, has been forced to navigate such a time.  Christ came to launch the Kingdom of God.  His incarnation, earthly ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection were all components of God’s great rescue of His creation from the power of sin and death.  The great catastrophe we call the Fall was healed.  New creation resulted.  Just read the gospels and be amazed.

Yet despite everything being put in place for this wonderful redemption, and despite the fact that we who by faith embrace this new Kingdom and are invited into abundant life as God’s children through the amazing working of the Spirit, the new creation of the Kingdom is yet to be fully realized.  We live in a liminal time.

So how do we, who have been born anew into Christ’s Kingdom, live in this liminal time?  Though some continue to try, we cannot live as we did in the former broken and sick world.  But neither can we yet live as we will once Christ returns to fully bring the new heaven and new earth.  

Be the Moon

I generally walk every morning, often before the sun comes up.  In a sense, night is a liminal space.  It occupies that time which divides one day from another.  Of course, the sun makes everything warmer and easier during the day.  But while I have been walking, I have often pondered the “lesser” light that rules the liminal space of the night.  The moon.

It has occurred to me that the Church’s role in our liminal time is much the same as that of the moon.  Just as the moon gives light to the night, so the Church’s way of being in this liminal time illuminates this current world.  It may not be as bright and warm as when the sun comes to take center stage.  But the moon’s light has much the same character and effect as that of the sun, even as the world is still in darkness.  This attribute is not because the moon has any light of its own.  No.  Rather, the moon is bright to the degree it reflects the light of the sun.

We who have entered into the new creation in Christ are called to live in this dark liminal time just like the moon.  Our way of living in the world is to be that of those who reflect the life, character, and glory of the triune God himself.  Only in this way will the world see clearly enough to leave the “forest dark” and enter into the Kingdom  which is already silently growing.

I want to be a FULL moon!!