Liminality

“[And] they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.”  (Luke 2.46, NRSV)  This week hundreds of thousands of students flock back to school ready to learn, ready to read, and ready to engage their minds with the problems and queries of our day.  I hope each one is as profoundly impacted by a teacher as I was nearly 10 years ago. It was my freshman year of college.  The class was Christian Doctrine.  One day we were introduced to feminist interpretation.  It’s the notion that when reviewing scripture, church history, religious rhetoric, etc. we pay attention to the increasingly apparent patriarchal hierarchies and rhetorical dominances.   Instead of taking them for face value, we listen for the still, small voice of how the context portrays the underprivileged (i.e. women). Honestly, I thought the whole thing was stupid. And that’s when my professor asked me a question that silenced my ego in front of the whole

Have you ever thought about the difference between places and spaces?  A   place   (as I would define it) is a location with determined boundaries.  A   space   is the opposite; it is a location with undetermined boundaries. Examples may help here. Take sanctuaries.  Their boundaries are determined with brick and mortar, walls and ceilings.  They’re also laced with memories, rituals, rites of passage, storylines, and moments of sadness, joy, and celebrations.  They’re marked (by each congregant) with an energy that cannot be erased.  The Celts call this a “thin place.”  They believe that the veil between heaven and earth gets “thin” enough in some places that heaven can actually be felt on earth.  Mountaintops, vacation spots, front porch swings, bedrooms, ball fields, and breakfast nooks are more good examples of   places . Spaces , on the other hand, are void of content, memory and energy.  They’re filled with emptiness (if that’s even possible), bareness and purposele