I got a little bit dizzy while I was walking Scout a few mornings ago. No it wasn’t the after effects of my first tattoo I got the evening before but instead it was walking right up to the edge of the asphalt with the water just a few inches away. As I walked on the pavement and looked down into the water, it wasn’t like I was just looking into a reflection but instead it felt like I was looking into something infinitely deep and yes, I felt a bit dizzy as I walked. But it was so beautiful... the blue and white of the sky reflected in contrast to the gray and cracks of the pavement... the depth of what I saw on the right contrasting with the evenness of the path... the softness of the right opposite with the solidity of the left.
There’s a concept in spirituality that there are places in the world that are best called Thin Space or “Liminal” Spaces. These are places where the divide between the earthly and the beyond seems thinner. In these places, it feels like the infinite is right there. Places like Iona and Jerusalem and Mecca are often experienced as liminal places. But a liminal space can also be right where we walk each morning as I shared above. A liminal space connects us to something that is far more expansive than what the ordinary feels like.
I’ve been reflecting a lot this week on a sense of expansiveness of what I have come to see in the Christian faith. This is in great contrast to how I understood it in the past - which was about putting up walls and barriers of who is in and who is out. It was about focusing on finding the solid and unshakeable truths as opposed to delving into the uncertainties of mystery and wonder. I’m sharing in worship this Sunday on a teaching of Jesus from John 10 where he speaks of himself as the gate through which the sheep under his care go. In the past, I focused on it as Jesus as the gate to salvation and that it was about being brought into that pen where we are protected and separated from the world. But as I read it this week, I heard it much differently - yes there is the drawing in that Jesus does but there is also the sending out from the bounded pen into the expansiveness of the pasture. The section for Sunday ends with Jesus saying “I have come that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.”
That last word also has a meaning of something being beyond measure. What if this work of Jesus is to lead us into a life that is not about boundaries but instead about something expansive, something deep, something mysterious, something in which wonder is never exhausted. What if it is about the feeling that I got when I was walking this morning looking over into the water and feeling a bit dizzy as I looked into what looked like the infinite? What if it is about finding those liminal thin spaces all around us?
I wonder if that liminal space gets thinner as we get older, like my old, crepe paper skin. We bleed easier. We bruise easier. We can see veins in details. Its almost as if we can see through it in some places. I can sense Jesus walking with me in a flowing way sometimes, or is it the Holy Spirit. That curtain between this world and the other world is as soft as slowly going underwater.
I agree. I have long felt liminal spaces in the mundanity of my ordinary life. My favourite time of the Church is Ordinary Time for that reason, guess. I am struggling to imagine that I still have a place in the church since leaving my last charge, but strangely I feel closer to the Source, the Mystery that I believe Jesus was talking about. But how do I share that with others who are in a similar or parallel place? I think this necessary but feel rather overwhelmed at the task before me. Glad to read your posts; they offer courage and comfort.