vitalwholeness

Liminality is a state of being occupying the space/time between here and there, the space in-between, a transitional domain on the other side of the familiar and known. This liminal space can be chosen as in a prescribed Rite of Passage or thrust upon us through a sudden calamity. The persons occupying this strange space take on a new identity as the old slips away and the new has not yet materialized. And the liminal space – however terrifying – is often full of potential to transform. Many of the greatest answers to life are found in liminal space, the other side of everything we thought we knew. It is a place of revelation and mystery.

My first book on liminality was Liminal Reality and Transformational Power (Cambridge, England, Lutterworth Press, 2016). This book was based on my doctoral dissertation and it provides a comprehensive hermeneutic of liminality. It not only summarizes the key aspects of liminality, but explores its intrapsychic dimensions, relates key themes to theological traditions, and suggests a way to employ its insights as an interpretive key and method.

I am the editor of Neither Here nor There: The Many Voices of Liminality (Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press, 2019). In addition to selecting the sixteen international authors and editing their work I wrote the Introduction, First Chapter and Conclusion. The award winning Barbara Brown Taylor has written the Foreword.

I was pleased to be included as a co-author in Crossing Thresholds: A Practical Theology of Liminality (Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press, 2021). This book explores the theological underpinnings of liminality and how liminality informs everything from text to process to tradition to ritual. It is especially relevant for theological teachers and students, pastors, lay leaders, chaplains and spiritual directors.

My most recent project is another anthology for which I serve as editor, The Liminal Loop: Astonishing Stories of Discovery and Hope (Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press). Its release will be in the fall of 2021. Its eighteen international contributors represent a broad array of disciplines, traditions and geographies. The Introduction is a poem written by the award winning singer-songwriter Carrie Newcomer. This book is ideal for seminary/university classes, discussion groups, and personal reading. It also may be understood as the second of a two-volume set, the first being Neither Here nor There.