Fare forward, travellers! Not escaping from the past Into indifferent lives, or into any future; You are not the same people who left that station Or who will arrive at any terminus. T.S. Eliot, The Dry Savages
The Latin word “limen” means “threshold” . Liminality is an inner state ands sometimes an outer situation where people can begin to think and act in genuinely new ways. It is when we are betwixt and between, have left one room but not yet entered the next room, any hiatus between stages of life, stages of faith, jobs, loves or relationships. It is that graced time when we are not certain or in control, when something genuinely new can happen. We are empty, receptive, an erased tablet waiting for new words. Nothing fresh or creative will normally happen when we are inside our self-constructed comfort zones, only more of the same. Nothing original emerges from business as usual. It seems we need some anti-structure to give direction, depth and purpose to our regular structure. Otherwise, structure, which is needed in the first half of life, tends to become a prison as we grow older. Much of the work of …human destiny itself is to get people into liminal space and to keep them there long enough to learn something essential and genuinely new. It is the ultimate teaching space. In some sense it is the only teaching space.
Richard Rohr, Adam’s Return
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