Friends, welcome to The Book of Common Words, where we explore the Christian spirituality of being human through poetry and prose about my life, art, and the Christian faith. I’m your writer, Aaron. This publication is 100% reader supported. Thanks for joining me in this exploration.
The world feels like a tire fire.
War in Palestine—more accurately, genocide—rages on with the US providing the tools of death. There is still another, longer war raging as Russa continues to invade Ukraine. The far-right-wing extremists seem to be moving more and more towards total power, growing louder and bolder with their hatred and bigotry.
In our own country, regression seems to be claiming space faster than progress can counter it. Anti queer sentiment is being transformed into law. The rights of women to their bodies are being legislated away, denying medical care in the name of “pro-life.” Racism in so many forms still stalks our culture. We have become numb to the gun violence that happens on an almost daily basis in schools and public gatherings.
Things are not ok.
It’s easy to give up, to become cynical in the face of all these horrors. It’s easy to hide and deny the reality of the hellscape we live in. It’s easy to give in and capitulate to the power structures of oppression and the status quo.
Yet we refuse to.
We give everything we have to the work because we believe a better world not only exists, but is possible to see pieces of it right now, even in the midst of empire.
We see what is around us, how things are and the reality of the situation, and then we dream of a better way, a better future, a better ending to the story. This seeing things for what they are and dreaming of a better way reflects the reality that we ourselves are liminal space.
We are both there and here. We are our own waking dream, dreaming of good in the raging night of evil all around us.
The self as liminal space is the self at work, doing, making, moving. It is the self, bridging what is with what will be, what has happened with what will come.
Liminal space is all about thresholds, the place where we are actively crossing from one thing into another. A thin space where the past still exists, but the future is coming to fruition.
We find ourselves here, in the now of history. What we want to see around us is what will be. We are the bridge between the two. We are the work that is occurring to birth a new creation. We are the efforts that are made to transform the old death into a resurrection.
We do our work in many places, spreading our seeds of change and hope into areas far and wide.
Justice.
Love.
Compassion.
Mercy.
Rebellion.
Revolution.
These are what we bring from the promise of new creation, the promise of a new way of being, the promise of hope—we bring these things into the here, the now, into the old ways of existing in oppression and among the oppressing forces.
We do this work of bridging what is with what will be in the face of empire, in the face of power structures that thrust is into what they see as important: money, greed, wealth, power over others.
But we refuse to capitulate to the empire’s vision of reality, that it will always be this way, that this is the arch of history, that this is the best there is.
We are the liminal space that spits prophetically in the face of empire, shouting at the top of our lungs that there is another way.
The self as liminal space is ultimately the self as alchemy, as change, as resurrection. What we do by bringing the not yet to collide with what is, this is the work of new creation. This is birthing the kingdom within us as an external experience of love.
Because of what we are, because of the liminal nature of revolutionaries, committed workers, poets, and artists—because of what we are, we need to spend our own time in liminal space so we don’t forget or forgo the vision.
We need to experience our own thin places, our own liminal spaces, to remind us what we are and to reconnect us with what isn’t yet here.
How do we retain perspective and vision as we continually go up against the steely, stone heart of empire? We see it anew in the spaces where the world grows thin and our promised new creation begins to break in.
So what does this mean practically? How do we interact with liminal spaces amidst the pollution, pull, and pressure of living every day in a capitalistic hellscape? How do we find the reminder of what we are and rest in the almost here of the kingdom?
Ritual is a good way to encounter thin places. Whether it be the liturgy of a church service or a personal candle and meditation time, find ways to interact with a ritual that reminds you that the rhythm of the grind isn’t what we were made for.
Touch some grass. Get out in the creation that was here long before us and that will bring us back to itself when we pass. Nature reminds us that the thin places are all around us, and that we are part of the web of life that may now be oppressed, but whose liberation is coming.
Spend time in deep conversations about things that matter. Ideas are revolutionary. They spark and seed atmospheres, attitudes, and actions that bring the yet to come close, and closer still. Conversations also remind us that we are not alone. We don’t do the work by ourselves. Others are existing as their liminal selves, bringing the future to pass with us. It takes all of us, and any time we silo ourselves away from community, we cloister ourselves against hope.
There are other ways to touch the thin places. Music. Art. Good food. Anyplace you can find peace and enjoyment, where you can lower your shoulders, relax your breathing, and let your body speak to you about what it needs. These are the places we will find refreshment and restoration.
Being in these liminal spaces is seeing the vision of the new world. In these spaces, we capture glimpses and glimmers of how things could be, how things are supposed to be. In the liminal places, we find a renewal of our visions, where we gain clarity, energy, and bravery for the work ahead.
This vision that sees and captures us is envisioning what we are doing, where we are going, and how we ourselves are liminal.
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