The sermon last Sunday was titled “Grief, Joy, and the Spaces in Between.”
Actually, it was about liminality (the spaces in between). Thank heaven for Wikipedia, which always goes the extra mile (owing to editor/contributors). Recently Wikipedia asked for donations to keep going, and I donated. Then I got an email thanking me for my recurring donation which I had been making all year (unknown to me). Yikes! I guess I will have to take care of that, unless I determine that Wikipedia is worth it.
Today it is worth it. Wikipedia has this to say:
“Liminality is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete. During a rite’s liminal stage, participants “stand at the threshold” between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way which completing the rite establishes.”
“More recently, usage of the term has broadened to describe political and cultural change as well as rites. During liminal periods of all kinds, social hierarchies may be reversed or temporarily dissolved, continuity of tradition may become uncertain, and future outcomes once taken for granted may be thrown into doubt. The dissolution of order during liminality creates a fluid, malleable situation that enables new institutions and customs to become established.”
The first paragraph is a pretty good description of life as we know it today: ambiguity and disorientation have become endemic amongst most of us, manifested in many ways, negative and positive.
The second paragraph is rather ominous, reflecting the most disturbing aspects of our current “rite of passage.” The last sentence sounds more reasonable than our circumstances warrant, but we can hope that we will enter into a “fluid, malleable situation” and that the “new institutions and customs” retrieve and re-establish our Democracy!
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