This week's theme...
One of my favorite college professor's best lectures is on everyone's mind this week
In college, I didn’t often take the super cool classes. You know, the writing with the favorite English professor or the amazing West African Dance class. I majored in things that could possibly get me a job, while also allowing me to protest all the things. You know, typical liberal arts classes but in a terrible economy.1 And yet, baby Maggie loved religion classes. Catholic school, instead of souring me on anything theology related, tuned me in to thinking about faith. I blame the ridiculously excellent religion teachers I had, some of whom were in the middle of PhD programs, and others I secretly think are on a list of canonization. Listen, if you had Marion Canney for BioEthics when you knew all and distained all as a high school senior, you’d know what I mean. Literally every teacher I’ve ever had will never hold a candle to Mrs. Canney. But Professor Miller comes close.
For the last month or more, I cannot stop thinking about one specific lecture from Professor Miller on liminal spaces. Liminality, he described, was the experience of transition. It is of crossing from one role of life into another. It can be a place of sort of holy fuzziness. This is why we have rituals around these transitions. Not only weddings for couples, but also rites of passage. We were spellbound by this discussion. I’m confident Professor Miller explained it in much better terms than fuzziness, but we’ll stick with what I have available to me today, mm ‘kay?
The easiest to grasp example of liminality is being pregnant with your first child. In those nine months, you transition from individual human, to mother. Society sees you differently. You see yourself differently. But this occurs for all sorts of roles in life, including moving from student to worker, and later, from worker to manager or mentor and finally from mentor to retired.
Every identity change can create stress merely from the change in these roles. Leaving the comfort of home to squash yourself into a cinder block dorm room with mattresses fabricated by someone with a grudge match against your ancestors is stress. Any time we change a fundamental component of ourselves we (potentially) have a moment of intense introspection. Alone, without a frame work, that holy fuzziness can cause confusion, and other social disruptions. Erik Erickson, a groundbreaking developmental psychologist, coined the term for this confusion or distress as an Identity Crisis.
We move through and from these liminal spaces repeatedly through life. Which means, we run up against a potential identity crisis often. Relationship changes, like divorce or marriage, changing jobs, loss of a loved one, a health crisis, or moving to a new place all can foster an identity crisis. So basically, anyone alive between 2020 and now might have had (or might be having) an identity crisis. Especially if we lingered in that space between roles. Especially if we had no holy in our holy fuzziness. One pastor I know explained liminality as ladder climbing, the place between letting go of one rung and grabbing hold of the next. A more anxious person (pointing at myself) might focus on the free fall between rungs, thinking only of the lack of something to hold on to. In fact, research shows that stressful transitions impact well being when they are perceived as a loss of identity. It’s not free fall though, nor does it have to feel like identity annihilation. It’s apparently where the good stuff is.
(sunshine through cherry blossoms)
And here’s where the everyday bit comes in. I read a lot of Substack newsletters. I mean, a LOT. I also read a lot of newsletters from authors. I probably could be a human aggregator at this point, but I digress. In all of that reading I noticed an uptick in the discussion of two things: liminal spaces and exhaustion. Of course those two topics are related. Stress from lingering too long in the liminality will exhaust anyone. All fuzzy no holy is bound to leave a mark. But there’s more. I think it’s the way we move through liminal spaces that may create the exhaustion.
(a view from inside the snow globe)
Richard Rohr2 has some thoughts on this. His describes liminal spaces as
We usually enter liminal space when our former way of being is challenged or changed—perhaps when we lose a job or a loved one, during illness, at the birth of a child, or a major relocation. It is a graced time, but often does not feel “graced” in any way. In such space, we are not certain or in control… Much of the work of authentic spirituality and human development is to get people into liminal space and to keep them there long enough that they can learn something essential and new… It is in these transitional moments of our lives that authentic transformation can happen. Otherwise, it is just business as usual and an eternally boring, status quo existence.
Holy Whitaker, who writes the Substack newsletter Recoverying and hit this topic too. She says
I mean: there are leaps and symmetry breaks in my development, fracturings and missing links between the one I am now and the phantom-self I was, and they occur exactly at the points in time where there was unfathomable loss and grinding pressure.
But wait, there is more. We are, sort of collectively, reconsidering a lot. Like the cost of attending college, for example. (See, there was a reason I kept mentioning it). “According to the Washington Post, Fewer than 1 in 3 Americans surveyed by the Strada Education Network now think a college degree is worth the cost.” We are all in this liminal space, this holy fuzziness, and yet, without each other. And without each other, we feel separate and alone. Loneliness is increasing, and costing us our health, not just our wellbeing. We are alone in the fuzziness. This can erase the sense of continuity we need to pass through this fuzziness.
By paying attention to what is happening from day to day, we can keep hold of the ordinary, the things not changing in ourselves or our world. That steadiness can help move forward into the transformative change. Like a dancer finds her pinpoint for turning and turning, or a yogi finds her drishti in the balancing poses, just noticing the sky changing in Spring bring clarity in the middle of the fuzziness.
(lit road flare, image from https://sofrep.com/gear/the-orion-road-flare-a-survival-resource/)
If, by some mundane miracle, you are still reading this, let me explain a touch further why I am so particularly interested in both today’s topic, liminal spaces, as well as the ordinary bits of life. It’s this: I moved to Utah for my husband’s job and also to be able to play outside more. Two rounds of COVID later, and I was sliding into an autoimmune disease that only made itself known through a flare. Like the loud firey neon colors flare. One little viral infection, and my cranky joints and extremely sad tummy changed to being short of breath, trouble swallowing, and an unsteady gait. Fun times. So too for the blood tests that showed an autoimmune disease, meaning, welcome to the holy fuzziness of not being a runner/hiker. But also, welcome to fatigue, a crushing daily experience that means choosing between showering and cooking, because you don’t have stamina for both. In 2020, I ran two half marathons in the one month. Stamina and I were buddies. Stamina has now left the group chat. And here I am. Apparently this is the part where I embrace my human-ness, my not robot-ness. Having an autoimmune disease feels like getting an extra reminder that I am human, and therefore, sometimes ill, imperfect, or flipping tired. Extra, human. Extra, ordinary. Extra-Ordinary.
(outside breakfast is my extra in my ordinary day).
True story, during my Sophomore year of college (1994), it was so bad that the bond market experienced what some economists called The Great Bond Massacre. You can’t make this stuff up.
Cites for the quotes are:
Richard Rohr: Oneing 8, no. 1, Liminal Space (Spring 2020): 17–18. Available in print and PDF download.
Holly Whitaker:
College costs: Alright, I got a little lazy at the end here, so I’m just citing an article I wrote here: https://www.bcgbenefits.com/blog/secure-act-clients-want-to-know
I am so glad I found your substack today! My experience of the shifting relationship between body, self, identity, experience has been with me lately. You've offered some really interesting framing for all of it. I love the word liminal and it's an interesting frame for processing this. Thank you for writing!