Liminality and all that jazz...
Liminality does sound to me like something to do with the speed limit in a car. Maybe liminality is the speed at which you trigger speed cameras..If you want a better definition check out this article in resonate which describes it as "a place inbetween". Right now I do feel like I'm in an inbetween place and I don't want to stay here for that long, I have a nagging feeling that there are deeper, richer more real expressions of church and faith out there but they're still to be discovered.
I've enjoyed a recent dialogue with a new blog contact and one of his questions keeps coming back to me, he asked "I wonder how many other young\ish Christians there are who feel torn in some way between their roots in evangelical\charismatic churches & convictions but also need to question, try things out, make excursions, and are all too aware of the growing gulf between the church and the growing number of spiritual seekers who are turning elsewhere to meet their need."
It's a great question because I hope that there is a stirring taking place on a scale much bigger than any of us have imagined, rather than a few who talk a good talk.
I want to see more of the transformational power of the gospel working in the lives of individuals and their communities, I don't want to stay in an inbetween place.
Liminality does sound to me like something to do with the speed limit in a car. Maybe liminality is the speed at which you trigger speed cameras..If you want a better definition check out this article in resonate which describes it as "a place inbetween". Right now I do feel like I'm in an inbetween place and I don't want to stay here for that long, I have a nagging feeling that there are deeper, richer more real expressions of church and faith out there but they're still to be discovered.
I've enjoyed a recent dialogue with a new blog contact and one of his questions keeps coming back to me, he asked "I wonder how many other young\ish Christians there are who feel torn in some way between their roots in evangelical\charismatic churches & convictions but also need to question, try things out, make excursions, and are all too aware of the growing gulf between the church and the growing number of spiritual seekers who are turning elsewhere to meet their need."
It's a great question because I hope that there is a stirring taking place on a scale much bigger than any of us have imagined, rather than a few who talk a good talk.
I want to see more of the transformational power of the gospel working in the lives of individuals and their communities, I don't want to stay in an inbetween place.
2 Comments:
while i was at Greenbelt this year i heard a guy called Richard Rohr who is an American Franciscan monk. he was excellent. anyway, he spoke a lot about liminality and one of the things he said was that those liminal times were the times where we really grow.
so if you're in one, it's not such a bad place to be! take heart.
By
Matt, at 11:04 AM
It's a toughie. Some questions in response ...
1. Is liminality a "less than" state, less desirable than "arriving"?
2. To what extent is liminality merely the practical daily experience of an "already but not yet" Kingdom of God?
3. If liminality is a transitional state, out of which we hope to (or are supposed to) emerge, into what do we hope to emerge? What appears in the mind's eye as the imagined or desired "emerged" state?
"Blessed are those who have set their hearts on pilgrimage ..."
By
Anonymous, at 2:54 PM
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