Life in a Liminal Space

When I asked to have my home recognized as a hermitage of the Lindisfarne Community last year, I understood at the time that it was an acknowledgement of the particular kind of space that we inhabit here, and the particular kind of life that we life here.  Over the past 15 months, I have endeavored to put words to that life, and the word that is coming to me more and more often recently is "liminal."  This space, and the life that is unfolding here, seems to be poised on a threshold of sorts, a here-but-not-rooted, or a now-and-not-yet kind of being.  It is unsettling, to be sure, and it is more than that.

My work situation has always been, well, flexible.  Every semester is different -- am I teaching or not teaching?  What am I teaching? How many hours will I work in the library?  How much time will I have to read, or write, or pray, or meditate, or walk, to do all the other things that keep me... I was about to say, "grounded."  But that's just it.  This liminal space, this threshold life, is not grounded and stable the way popular spirituality suggests we're supposed to be.  It's quite the opposite -- open, fluid, held as lightly as one can hold an acre of land and a mortgage.  Like the wild goose that hangs on my wall, it feels sometimes as though this life is a flight through open space: no net, no ground, only the arms of God to catch me, catch us.

It terrifies me, and yet at the same time, it somehow feels right.  As though, while it's not comfortable, there's actually nowhere else to be.  The only reasonable response, then, is to consent to being in liminal space, to allow the veil to be thin, as the Celts would say, to breathe in Spirit and not know what will happen when one breathes out.  To not fix, only be.  It is becoming a form of constant contemplation, this awareness of liminality, and I think that is good.  It is my desire to become more and more contemplative, and this may be how that contemplative life is expressed, at least for now, at least for me.  Awareness, liminality, contemplation, woven into a delicate web.  I will rest there.