I have a dear friend who is absolutely inbetween everything in her life. Whatever it is, she is inhabiting space between what was and what is to come next. What a place to be. For good or ill every one of us has the chance to spend substantial time in that never-never land of the inbetween. Things get taken apart. But they also get put back together in a new way.
Some fifteen years ago I did research into this phenomenon called Liminality. The word derives from the Latin, limins, meaning threshold. We cross the threshold out of one thing into another. I even had a book published on it (Liminal Reality and Transformational Power: University Press of America).
There are multiple forms of liminality – everything from social disarray to inner dissolution and reconstitution. Some passages are ritualistic – such as the traditional rites of passage found in almost all cultures. Others result from unexpected calamity. Whatever the cause, whether individual or collective, cyclical or once only, we are not left the same on the other side. We can be transformed and for the better by such a passage.
And so the new year of the calendar looms ahead. You and I will have lots of opportunities to pass through liminal space. And we might even allow for the sacred forces at work to reshape us, like the potter and the clay. It’s possible. I’m counting on it, as is my friend who is in the inbetween right now.
vitalwholeness 