We are creatures of comfort.
We like to be safe and secure
to be surrounded by what we know,
to be in control
to be in control
to order our lives in the way that suits us.
We want our journeys mapped out for us
itinerary decided, tickets booked
time of arrival guaranteed
refreshment breaks at regular intervals
and a credit card for unforeseen circumstances.
But Jesus said ‘follow me’ without saying where he was going
just promising transformation along the way.
Building houses, having children, planting trees - documenting our passing through time so that one day we may look back and remind ourselves: we once existed. Writing. Writing about houses and children and trees and love and loss and understanding, writing like swimming against the sweeping tide of all things ephemeral. But these are all illusions. The houses will crumble, the children will die, the trees will wither; the words too will one day be forgotten. We know this, yet we carry on documenting everything along the way, because to live is to be in continuous transformation and we must remember which way we came and how we became the person lying on the death bed.
My documentation is poor, yet it has been even poorer. At every major turning of my life, I wish painfully that I could remember all of it hitherto: every meaningful conversation, every insightful book, every article, talk or radio programme and, most importantly, every nuance of every emotion, of every sensation and every thought ever stirred in me by the remarkable people I have met along the way. These would be my houses and my trees, the necessary proofs of my Becoming.
Ideas, especially, are so painfully fickle - I would require another ten life times to make sense of them all. This is why experience must be followed by reflection - how else could we ever learn? I feel the data-gathering part of the cycle is drawing slowly to a close and now I must think. The season is changing. The road must be followed, the transformation must take its course no matter how sad it might be to leave behind all that which has made it possible. I am both the master and the slave of my Becoming.
Liminal space is the place of inbetweenness, of insecurity.
It is the Israelites in the wilderness,
it is Paul blind in Damascus waiting for Ananias.
Liminal space is emptiness and nowhere, it is uncertainty and chaos,
it is a place of discomfort and unrest.
Liminality is a place of dying and rebirth, of metamorphosis,
the place where the caterpillar spins its cocoon and disappears from view.
Nothing good or creative emerges from business as usual.
Much of the work of God is to get people into liminal space and to keep them there
long enough so they can learn something essential.
An atheist myself, I still must recognise and like in this text the idea of liminal spaces being conducive to revelation. Naturally, it is only one incarnation of the idea amongst many, but I like it because it's an old story and a familiar myth. A book by Andrei Plesu which I read a few years ago spoke of a similar notion. The book was About Angels and his thesis - that human life is by its very nature a product of Liminality: we are never there but always on our way. Life is perpetual transformation.
Of course, what follows from this proposition is the thought of accepting change as life itself. This, because it makes our expectations more reasonable. As creatures of inbetweeness, longing for a perpetual, static (and, in that, Angel-like) state of happiness is crazy: the most we can hope for is going through a moment of happiness, like the train through a riveting landscape; but we should never expect for the landscape stretch to onwards eternally, which is a quality reserved for the non-transformational existences of Angels and their God.
I really like this depiction: human life much like a train journey - perpetual transformation; angelic existence much like arriving at the destination and getting off the train. Us, alive, under the imperative of Time's incessant Arrow; Angels, immortal, outside of It - in a timeless (and therefore static) universe. Angels may be happy, the most we can hope for is becoming so. Thus the transformation carries on and our own travel journal with it: more houses, more children, more Life, more trees to make into more books with yet more words to be forgotten. The train runs swiftly towards our impending doom.
But it is not the doom itself that is the cause of my affliction. It is the turning and the rattling of the train as it pulls me rapidly away from this Present, and all its wonders, towards my Future, and all its threats. The more marvellous the journey, the more painful my limited ability to remember everything. Yet, for all my sorrow, I am still one of these people who does in fact prefer the way things are. I like the journey, I like the transition, wherever it might take me next. I am not scared. Or, I am but still Angelic life sounds far too boring. 'This being human is a guest house', I should welcome and entertain it all: the good and the bad, the calm, the lonely, the strange and the wicked. Bring the show on and let us enjoy it, let us stop trying to get ahead of ourselves by attempting to mimic the eternal.
I am not scared, of course, but I am sad. Sad because I may or may not remember it all, the nuances, the thoughts, the sensations, the colours of people, the shape of their minds, the content of their teachings; the scent of nights on bridges, the light of days on roads. But I must carry on with the journey so I may thus try to become better, always better still, and my love for all the wonderful people in my life to come to be worth more, always more still. Then, should my houses and my trees and all these words ever fail to document, perhaps their memory of me could ultimately serve as the necessary proof that I once existed.
In any case, here I am. On a train, with a journal. My stomach painful with anxiety and jumping up and down with joy, my head light with excitement and anticipation, my heart heavy with the sorrow of this saying good bye, still, far too many times. Another hour has gone past. Overall, however, I'm quite happy. Fuelled by an infinite amount of love and tea, playing my tunes, cleaning my shoes, folding my shirts, as from the start, as now once more, as to the end - here still I carry on, Becoming.
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