While surfing the Internet, I discovered a number of Youtube videos devoted to liminal spaces, a term I still struggle to define. They are bland and innocuous, but somehow vaguely creepy and foreboding. They seem to be in-between spaces, places along a journey that are not designed for lingering. They are often painted in either muted, unsaturated colors or colors that are so garish that you could be forgiven for thinking you were having a dream that was the result of poor digestion.
But what does this all have to do with us at St. John’s and what does it have to do with Lent?
Actually, everything.
If nothing else, Lent is a liminal space on the calendar. Perhaps very few of us–if any–really look forward to Lent in the same way that we look forward to Easter. To top it off, we find ourselves in an interim period, something that rolls around at irregular intervals. We may enjoy interim rectors, but we also long for the coming of a long-term rector.
Maybe liminal spaces and liminal times lead us to an uncertain nostalgia for a past that seems more glorious in retrospect. Memory Lane can be a beautiful place, but God always has good things in store for us if we’re willing to go through the liminal space with holy boldness and confidence.
Submitted by Sam Dickey