The Space In Between

It’s over. She left. He died. They quit. You’re fired. Social existence is now relegated to online only because of a virus. Now what? You sit in stunned silence, holding only to the memory of a person or an experience. What seemed like your everything is now simply, a past thing. 

So here you sit, in emptiness, having no idea of who or what is next. 

Welcome to the space between the clouds.

To be found on cloud nine is to experience that transcendent feeling of nailing it, marrying him/her, winning top prize, or checking a box off the bucket list. How amazing are those moments? Actually, it’s likely the plan, correct? Because winning and being on top and being found weightless feels incredible. Heavenly even. But how much of that is real life? How many “cloud moments” would you guess you’ve had in your lifetime? Five? Seven? Two? Can we all agree to the number being… small?

If we’re honest, we know that most of life takes place in the space between the big moments. This is often referred to as Liminal Space. The word “liminal” comes from the Latin word limens, which means, "threshold." This is the place where we stand at the threshold of where we just were and where we are heading next. But we are no longer on the cloud behind us and we haven’t yet determined the cloud in front of us. You just quit your job, or you were fired, and you have no idea what’s next. He left you, the relationship is over, and a new one seems a hundred miles and a new heart away. The news outlets announce a virus has been unleashed and everything turns off, shuts down, and all the doors seem to be shut... and locked.

Welcome to the space between the clouds.

Franciscan Father, Richard Rohr, invites us to embrace this transforming space, “…where we are betwixt and between the familiar and the completely unknown. There alone is our old world left behind, while we are not yet sure of the new existence. That’s a good space where genuine newness can begin. Get there often and stay as long as you can by whatever means possible…This is the sacred space where the old world is able to fall apart, and a bigger world is revealed. If we don’t encounter liminal space in our lives, we start idealizing normalcy. The threshold is God’s waiting room. Here we are taught openness and patience as we come to expect an appointment with the divine Doctor.” 

That’s an appointment we all need to book. Rohr continues guiding us through this space, “… It is when you have left the tried and true, but have not yet been able to replace it with anything else.  It is when you are between your old comfort zone and any possible new answer. If you are not trained in how to hold anxiety, how to live with ambiguity, how to entrust and wait, you will run…anything to flee this terrible cloud of unknowing.”

But we know and can trust the certainty found in the comfortable and consistent. The problem is that the static and staying put isn’t real life. 

The real and genuine is found in the elasticity between persistence and patience, which forms a life of depth and meaning. 

Hold on, read that sentence again, because it’s more than a sentence. To have a soul that becomes more and more pliable shapes a life worth living, a life that embraces the inevitable newness between clouds. Welcome to the space between the clouds, let’s sink in and see if we can’t learn to embrace the liminal.