Liminality

Have you ever wondered about our fascination in movies?  Even with ticket prices where they are, we still flock to the cinemas to watch new releases and box offices giants.  But why?  I’m sure there are number of reasons but I think it’s because of the “narrative experience.”  We get thrown into a world.  We escape reality, escape space and time.  We become a player in the movie.  We feel with the characters, we hurt and cry, sympathize and hate; we attach ourselves to the storyline knowing the protagonist is going to make it, he’s going to save the day, get the girl, stop the bomb, hit the homerun and escape death all the while never messing up his hair or getting seriously injured, yet we still get anxious when danger’s lurking.  And it’s happening on more than a physical level; it becomes something more, something from down deep. That’s why people go to live performances and concerts.  For the human connection.  The narr...

Inside, Outside, Upside Down – it’s a classic written by the Berenstain family, better known as the Berenstain Bears.  Have you ever read it?  You need to.  It’s glorious.  It’s about a little cub who gets inside a delivery box without knowing it was about to get shipped across town when all of a sudden a delivery man seals it, flips it over and takes it on a three hour ride.  I love this book.  Although . . . I’m not sure why.  The book is a little shady.  A six year old cub, at best, climbs in a box, gets shipped in the back of a truck and wanders through life for at least three hours before the mother even realizes he’s gone missing.  It’s terrible parenting, poor sense of judgment on the cub’s part, and ridiculous that a delivery man would not even notice there’s a living creature inside the box he’s totting around.  But despite these apparent flaws, the book does have a certain appeal.  Its majesty comes with its fic...

Last week I had the pleasure of hearing to two of my favorite theologians.  One’s a spiritualist and the other’s a social activist. They couldn’t be more different.  I went to hear on Thursday Fr. Richard Rohr at St. Philips Episcopal Cathedral.  He’s a Franciscan priest.  He spoke about living contemplatively.  On Saturday I went to First Presbyterian Church Atlanta to spend the day with Tony Campolo, a social activists and theologian from Eastern University in Philadelphia.  I love both these guys.  But they couldn’t be more different.  Here’s what I gathered from their lectures (I realize these next statements are polarizing and generalizations and do not represent the entire theology of either theologian but they do create enough of a dichotomy to merit this blog post):  Rohr cares deeply about the spiritual sector.  Campolo cares deeply about the social sector. Rohr thinks if the world would open itself to ...

The Magi all had an epiphany and followed it.  But what I find to be peculiar about Matthew 2 is the “why” in which the Magi followed it.  They travel from afar walking across the Jordanian desert.  This would take weeks.  They caravanned after viewing a star in the sky?  What kind of epiphany would it take in your gut to convince your family, your country, or your temple guards that you needed to make a pilgrimage west to see a baby being born, give him the most expensive gift we have to give, travel alone and all you are basing this gut feeling on is the formation of the stars.  And if that isn’t wild enough, you meet at least two others with the exact same story on your journey.  From a logical standpoint, the odds of this really happening are slim.  But this story brings with it something much deeper than logic.  This story carries the majesty of an appointed epiphany.  Webster defines Epiphany as a “Sudden Realizatio...