Resting in Liminal Space

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I love airports. I like train stations too, but here in the states, airports will do. Maybe it’s because I enjoy traveling more than breathing, but there is a palpable energy in the air with so many people coming and going. Some wave tearful goodbyes while others embrace in heart-felt hellos. There’s nothing like the intensity and excitement of so many human beings sharing the same lived experience. Everyone is on the precipice of a journey, navigating where they’ve been with where they long to go.

In many ways airports are liminal spaces, a place of tension and transition between here and there. From the Latin “limen,” liminal simply means threshold, or a time between the familiar and the unknown. It’s what author Eleanor Rees calls “balancing on the unseen.” I like that.

If you are deconstructing evangelicalism or your faith is naturally evolving, you know what she means. Old certainties no longer do, but you aren’t sure that what comes next will be better and more true than what you leave behind. Which is why liminal spaces can feel uncomfortable.

In truth, the spiritual journey consists of many liminal spaces between being and becoming. Whenever we find ourselves between here and not yet, standing on the threshold of knowing and unknowing, we are in divine time. It is here in this necessary time between times that we learn to surrender, to let go of our urge to know anything with any lasting certainty. As much as we’d rather skip this step and go directly from deconstruction to reconstruction, we dare not or we will miss what this precious space has to teach.

Whenever I face a season of uncertainty, I generally respond negatively by second-guessing myself or blaming my anxiety either on others or on circumstances out of my control, like a delayed flight. But this only adds stress upon stress causing me to spiral into self-loathing and resentment. Maybe you do something similar. In fact, odds are many of you are experiencing liminal space right now, caught somewhere between hope and regret. Instead of resisting this time of uncertainty, rest in it. Sit in hopeful expectation that this gate will lead you from where you no longer wish to be to a place you never dreamed possible. If you muster the courage to do so, what might change at your heart-level if you see this tender moment as a sacred threshold rather than an inconvenience?

For some of you, transition and change aren’t new. You’ve already experienced liminal spaces in your spiritual and physical life. What was it like? What did you learn from it? What will you do differently the next time you find yourself caught between two worlds?


Gary Alan Taylor
The Sophia Society