The Power and the Possibility of Liminality

Aug 25, 2019

By Rev. Rebecca

As I sat there, the  pain of seven days only getting worse, I knew what I had to do. It was time to go to the hospital and receive medical care. I had been hoping against hope that this pain would go away on its own. I was avoiding receiving care because I was afraid of the procedure, an endoscopy, that I might need to have. Would it hurt? What if I couldn’t speak or preach today after having it? 

I realized in that moment that I was once again in a space of liminality, the times in our lives when what had been is no more and what will be is not yet known. In this situation I was no longer a person who didn’t know that she was  allergic to a particular antibiotic, I clearly knew that from the pain that I had been experiencing, and yet, I did not know what was to come. 

Some people call these the hallways of life. And we all go through them, some lasting a short time and others over a period of years. The key to liminality is that something that had been true is no longer true and what will be true is not yet known. Inherently liminality includes loss, even when the change is one that we’ve chosen and that is good. 

I have walked through many lives, some of them my own,

and I am not who I was. How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses? …. In my darkest night, when the moon was covered and I roamed through wreckage, a nimbus-clouded voice directed me:

“Live in the layers, not on the litter.

Taken from our reading this morning, by Stanley Kunitz. 

Kunitz, born in Worcester MA in 1905, was the poet laureate of the United States in 1974 as well as consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in the year 2000.  His life was full of loss and liminal times. Six weeks before Stanley was born, his father went bankrupt and committed suicide. His mother, who was from Lithuania, remarried and opened a dry good stores after which she declared bankruptcy. His stepfather died of a heart attack when Stanley was fourteen. 

“How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?”

Kunitz earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Harvard. When he wanted to go on and earn his doctorate there however, he was denied. He was told it would not go over well with the other students to be taught by a Jew. 

In my darkest night, when the moon was covered and I roamed through wreckage, a nimbus-clouded voice directed me:

“Live in the layers, not on the litter.”

Later in his life Kunitz was denied conscientious  objector status in World War II and was sent instead to serve. Though one of the most influential poets of our time, his journey with publishing poetry was not an easy one. Only three volumes of poetry were published in the first thirty years of his writing. 

We realize when we explore even a little the history of this great poet that Kunitz writes from a place of experience, of truth. He speaks from deep experiences with liminality when he writes of having many lives in his own life, struggling to make peace with his losses and being inspired to live in the layers not the litter.

Liminal space is a term used in anthropology as well as psychology and theology. It is that time or times between realities. 

It can be a scary, lonely and confusing time. It can also be an exciting, creative and hopeful time. Regardless of whether it is a deeply human time and one that we all experience many times. All of our lives have litter, and layers. 

Each of us here right now is living in some or many liminal spaces. Most obviously, we share in the liminality of the ending of summer and the start of autumn. You may have taken a child or grandchild to college, started a new job, lost or left one. You may be wondering what is happening in our world and what is going to be happening in the days and months to come. You may be lost. You may almost be found. You may be on the edge of what is still unknown. 

Our lives are in constant transition, all of our life is indeed liminal. William Butler Yeats wrote; “How many times a person lives and dies between the two eternities.” 

This space of liminality is inherently uncomfortable, ambiguous and uncertain. Unless we are conscious of it, our instinctual reaction to this kind of discomfort will be to run, find ground or safety, as quickly as we can. It is normal human behavior. 

Others of us when in this space will look to something, someone, or anything outside of ourselves to tell us what to do or relieve the pain. 

Living consciously, without reactivity and with a presence of mind in this space of liminality requires a lot from us. Most of all it requires spiritual and emotional skills. Examples of these are knowing how to find ground inside of ourselves when there appears to be or is in fact none around us, remaining open when we want to close and being a non-anxious presence in the midst of turmoil and fear. These skills are not taught in the classroom or work environments.

It is helpful to understand this even though being able to live well in liminal space is not about knowledge or intellect. Our minds can be obstacles to receiving the gifts of liminality. 

There are gifts to this liminal space, but we have to be open to them. Some of the gifts include developing spiritual maturity and deeper compassion. So too at these times of liminality or change, we can learn humility, develop softness, and understand the power of vulnerability. We can realize the importance of acts of kindness, small and large. 

Being able to live well during times of “no more and not yet” often demands that we let go of what was including the things we have come to believe as “truths” and “conclusions” as Tolstoy called them. We also must be able to sit with hard feelings and also discern when and where action is necessary. 

I sum up the life skills necessary to be at peace with liminality with two mantras. “Let it Be” and “Do the Next Right Thing.” I’ll speak about each briefly.

“Do the next right thing.” When we live in this place of uncertainty, it is best to focus on the right now, not on the horizon.  Doing this we live in this moment and then the next. 

I remember being a new mother and feeling so overwhelmed. I would walk around the house with the burping blanket over my shoulder, my baby having just fallen asleep and wonder, “What now!?” When I called a dear friend to ask what to do now she asked how long it had been since I had taken a shower. When I answered, “I don’t know, probably a week,“ she said, “Take a shower.”

“Do the next right thing.” 

Doing the next right thing during times of change or loss often requires that we cancel plans, take it easy on ourselves, and allow ourselves the space to grieve. Doing nothing is often the next right thing by the way, especially during liminal times. 

Which brings me to “Let it be.” There are incredible power and strength in knowing how to let things be. This looks like the ability to maintain perspective that the discomfort we feel during times of liminality is healing, creative potential and energy at work. Letting things be is the wisdom we have when we know that there is nothing to be fixed or that time cannot be made to move any faster. The serenity prayer reinforces this in its familiar words: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

In his book “Transitions” William Bridges writes of his wife’s premature death in her mid-fifties. Bridges recalls one night when h  is wife was in a lot of pain and things were particularly bad. He was sitting beside the bed watching her struggle to breathe when she said to him, “This positive thinking stuff is crap. But then so is negative thinking. They both cover up reality – which is that we just don’t know what is going to happen. That’s the reality we have to live with.” Bridges goes on to say, “It is easy to see why people take refuge in optimism or pessimism. They both give you an answer. But the truth is that we just don’t know. What a hard truth that is!”  “Let it Be.”

When we don’t let it be–in other words, when we act prematurely or out of a need to know the answer before its time–we run the risk of cutting off the creative possibilities. We jump to a place called safety, and we miss the space called possibility. I know. It’s an old habit I am trying to break. 

 In a moment we are going to sit together and listen to a song. It will likely be a familiar one to many of you. As we listen to the music and words, I invite you to imagine the liminal places that you are in or have been in or both, the lives and friends that you have left behind, the layers that make up your life, the feast of losses that a heart must reconcile. Ask yourself only what am I leaving behind? What layers are there to carry me?  What is my next right step? And, how can I let it be?

So, let us listen, my friends, together. 

Play song

This liminality – it’s a human thing – when we know we are there let’s  do the next thing, love ourselves and others, take heart, and let it be. 

Amen and Blessed Be 

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