Liminal
Time
“The
energy in any system eventually dissipates and must be renewed at crucial
intervals. In the social milieu, that is accomplished by various rites of
passage.”
Timothy
Carson (The Liminality Project)
Timothy
Carson is the director of The Liminality Project and has written extensively
about liminality, both individual and societal. The idea of liminal time and
space comes from the Latin word, limen, meaning “A threshold.” We automatically think
of the opening in a wall we call a “door,” but threshold is broader than that—it
is a transitional term and can mean the opening from one life stage to another,
the physiological changes from child to teen and teen to adult. It can mean the
social transition from one state of governing or organization to another, and
many other “from-to” scenarios that we as human beings transit over a lifetime.
Images of liminality are often sunrises on an expanse of ocean, long, empty
roadways, or the empty arches of a colonnade.
In social
structures, we mark our liminal passages with rites and rituals. For example,
baptism, bar- and bat-mitzvah, first communion, Quinceanera, high school
graduation, marriage, military service, and many others. We mark them because they signify a
change in status, in beingness, in identity. We go from child to adult, from single
to married, from student to employee. So many transitions in a lifetime—both within
and without. Some of them are celebrated in high fashion, and some happen
internally, almost without notice except by the person going through it. All of
them are transitory—and that is how they are meant to be.
According
to Timothy Carson, there is a predictable pattern to liminal transitions. They
happen in three stages: Pre-liminal, which is the known and assumed structure
of ordinary life. Liminal-an ambiguous transitional period. And Post-liminal-the
new, adjusted, and transformed state. The liminal period is marked by chaos and
confusion, sometimes by anger and emotional instability while a person, or a
culture, figures out what its new form will be. It is, as Carson puts it, “a
time of ambiguity, paradox and confusion.” A person going through this
threshold stage is dangerous simply because they have lost their dependable
stabilizing guardrails, and do not yet have new ones. They are free-falling to
a degree, and unpredictable. Societies are like that too in the transitional
stage of liminality. We, here in America, and perhaps in the whole world, are
now in this stage.
We have
been through a pandemic that has killed millions of people worldwide. We are now
trying to adjust to a new normal that looks nothing like the old normal. We
have endured a catastrophic political season in which a sitting president
incited an attack on the nation’s capital building to derail the very ritual that
would replace him. That scene at the capital on January 6th, came
straight out of the Dark Ages. It was mob-chaos that involved hand to hand
combat with primitive weapons. I didn’t see any pitchforks there, but they
would have fit right in with that shamanic dude with the horns. We are now in
the “post-ictal phase of the seizure.” We are withdrawing from 20 years of war
and trying to resume life as we knew the American way to be, but we can’t
remember what it was, or even if it really was that way. There has never been a
clearer time of liminality.
One
hopeful thing to remember is that this is a transitional stage—we are going
through it, and we will come out the other side. We will not be the same
people, or the same country, and the world too will be different.
Transformation is part of the cycle. I’ll be honest with you—I’m excited to see
what we become. Stay tuned. We’ll check it out together.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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