Liminality
One theme I’ve repeatedly encountered in the sermons of my parish priest, the Rev. Dr. Lin Lilley, is the theme of “Liminal Space.” This theme appeared as I watched and listened to Mass yesterday morning on Zoom, as she preached on the raising from the dead of Lazarus in John’s Gospel, the Valley of the Dry Bones from Ezekiel and Psalm 130. Fr. Richard Rohr, a Franciscan Priest in Albuquerque, defines Liminal Space as being on a “threshold” (limen in Latin), being between the familiar and the completely unknown, a place where “our old world [is] left behind, while we are not yet sure of the new existence.”
We are all in a liminal moment now whether we know it or believe it or not. My life has been defined by an unnerving degree of “liminality” for over a month. I was supposed to be deployed for nine months starting at the beginning of this month. We gave our notice at our apartment complex that we would be moving out, my partner moved to Greeley, Colorado to be close to his family and all of our possessions in El Paso are locked away in storage. After all this the deployment was canceled at the last minute due to the pandemic. So I will be homeless as of tomorrow, all my things are packed away and Alex is in Colorado. I am thankful for the kindness of another doctor who loaned me his car and for the hospital I work at which has agreed to let me stay rent-free in medical student quarters. You may ask why I don’t just find a new apartment and Alex move back to El Paso? Although my deployment was canceled I’ve been told that we may still deploy somewhere else in the coming months — for that reason moving back to El Paso and all the costs involved would make no sense. My recent medical practice has also been marked by change — I was initially tasked with helping to lead a quarantine effort. Subsequently I was pulled back to my hospital to help with our COVID-19 response. I’ve administered drugs like remdesivir which I’d never heard of until a few months ago. I’m now a regular prescriber of hydroxychloroquine, a medication I had previously left to the rheumatologists. I’ve honed my expertise in the donning and doffing of personal protective equipment.
A strange recollection has manifested in the back of my mind in recent weeks, seeing how much has changed, seeing once busy bars and restaurants deserted, seeing people wearing their face masks as they get groceries, answering the screening questions and having my temperature checked as I enter the hospital. The memory that has been repeatedly called to mind is a memory from the evening of September 11th, 2001. It was the beginning of my senior year at Whitworth College and I was living in a modest apartment complex in Spokane, Washington. The apartment complex had a small track in an interior courtyard. In the dusk and early darkness of evening as I jogged laps, I looked in on many first-floor apartments, families and individuals lightened by a bluish glow as they tried to take in what had occurred that morning. None of us could have imagined how much the world had changed. We are in such a moment once again. The world is changing and has changed.
Fr. Rohr calls Liminal Space sacred space, the space where transformation can occur and where God brings newness as false certitudes fall away. I admit that I have a hard time embracing anything about this space we are in. I grieve for those suffering in ICUs, for families who have lost loved ones, for those who are out of work. I worry about my family and my patients. I hate being separated from Alex. I’m not looking forward to lacking “my own space,” to go home to. And unfortunately I don’t see it getting better any time soon. But if I claim to have faith in God, in the One who said “Behold, I make all things new,” and that “the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us,” then I must not give in to despair. Knowing the One who made the universe and then came into that very world to redeem it by suffering and dying on a cross should wrench me out of my own self pity. May we love and care for one another and may God have mercy on us all.
