Liminality and the Kingdom of Heaven

I learned a new word a while back, and I’ve had somewhat of a fascination with it ever since. The word is “Liminality.” Liminality is used differently in different domains, but at the core, liminality is the notion of existing at a boundary or threshold. It’s the “in between” place or the “in between” time. It’s the overlap between “No Longer” and “Not yet”.

Interspersed through this article are pictures from the subreddit r/Liminal Spaces. It’s a community of people online who have taken to finding pictures manifesting liminal space. Their definition of liminality as follows:

Liminality is a universal experience, and after the term is defined everyone can recognize a liminal space or time. Liminality is that instant in time between dreaming and waking, where the reality of your dreams quickly fades to what is true reality. Liminality is the sunset, the moment before dusk, where the world is transitioning from not fully awake to not fully asleep. Liminality is the confusion of your teenage years, learning to live as an adult but certainly no longer being a child.

Liminality is the overlap between “No Longer” and “Not yet”.

Liminality is the tension in music before a chord resolves. The Four before the One. The “A” before the “men”. Liminality is any transitional time in your life. Often, liminality can be incredibly difficult, or at the least incredibly uncomfortable. Liminality is the time spent learning to live with a new medical diagnosis, or the infinitude of time learning how to live again after a loved one has passed on.

Liminal time is disorienting. It takes us out of the routine of our daily lives and puts us into a setting where we must live with a new set of rules governing us, leaving us unsure how long these new rules will be our “new normal”. At this point, some of you may recognize the most universal liminal event of our lifetimes: The COVID pandemic.

Think back to the start of the pandemic, and the confusion and uncertainty surrounding it. What are the new social norms? How long will this last? How seriously do I need to take this? What does that mean for my day to day life? That confusion, the unknown, the change, and the frustration those emotions bring up are all part of a liminal experience.

At the ideal, we are able to fully embrace the reality of our present.

Instead of simply waiting, we can *dwell* in the transitional period.

During these periods of transition, we are often left with a choice of how to respond to our ever changing surroundings. At the ideal, we are able to fully embrace the reality of our present. Instead of simply waiting, we can *dwell* in the transitional period. Instead of simply existing, we *cherish* our reality and *work* to interact with our new surroundings. Sometimes, this work involves moving towards a new reality.

Despite this, the struggle of existing inside liminal space is never so ideal. We might try and refuse to accept that a new reality exists at all, choosing to ignore the present or future and reminisce on the past. By doing so we disengage with the present, often at the expense of truly engaging with those who exist in the reality we've denied. An extreme example of this is COVID deniers, so dead set against dealing with the pandemic so as to deny the reality of it and put others at risk.

By denying our new reality we disengage with the present, often at the expense of truly engaging with those who exist in the reality we’ve denied.

Sometimes, we see the future ahead and spend all our efforts on pining for it. We set aside our current reality and stop engaging with the present. For myself, during the pandemic I found it much more difficult to engage with people even when given the opportunity to do so safely.

The added pressure and stress of digital communication, or worrying about an ever changing set of social protocols, or whatever other excuses I could come up with kept me from engaging with people even when I had the chance.”This will all be over soon enough and *then* I can put the effort into engaging with people” I would tell myself. When in reality, all I was doing was shutting myself off from others.

While this notion of liminality is fascinating to think about in its own right, what truly made the concept of liminality fascinating to me was this: It has completely altered some of the fundamental ways I view my Christian faith.

In her book  “Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life”,Tish Harrison Warren writes about the practices and routines of everyday life, and makes a case for turning everyday tasks into sacred acts, a worship, a liturgy. This may have been the first time I explicitly saw the term liminality applied to the Christian tradition. Her words describing this are better than any summary I could come up with, so I will next quote some extended sections of her chapter on waiting:

"Christ has come, and he will come again. We dwell in the meantime."

Warren’s beautiful prose in that chapter is a reminder of the promise of living out God’s Kingdom. And that promise of Kingdom living is a fundamental shift in how I’ve viewed my own faith. Before I read Warren’s book, I had read N.T. Wright’s book “Surprised By Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church”. In this book Wright spends a decent amount of time detailing the problems of an evangelical faith that emphasizes “going to Heaven when you die” as the ultimate goal. Essentially, when taken to the extreme, an overemphasis on the promise of a future Heaven leaves a faith that has no little motivation to truly engage with the present and the earth, outside of the goal of bringing others to Heaven with you.

While of course it is not always the case this will lead evangelicals to act this way, but the problems of an overemphasis on Heaven leading to a disengagement with the world rang true to me, and I’d say it easily rings true for many in and outside of the faith. I’ve seen versions of this critique obliquely referenced in songs and movies, most directly in Bon Iver’s song “Heavenly Father”, whose a capella chorus leaves the listener with the ending lyrics: “Heavenly Father, is all that he offers, a safety in the end?" And to make the theoretical extreme example in Wright’s book concrete, I’ve spoken with friends who have expressed that their actions on this earth seem futile with the future of Heaven in mind.

N.T. Wright doesn’t explicitly bring in the notion of liminality into his kingdom living discussion, but the notion of Kingdom living is steeped in it, as Warren points out. Christ came to earth, was crucified and was resurrected, and that has put us all in liminal time. If you are a Christian, you have likely already accepted this new reality, and doing so left you with many questions. What are the new social norms? How long will this last? How seriously do I need to take this? What does that mean for my day to day life?

We are living in the in between, and it is all too easy to look at the promise of the future and to disengage with the present. We know the world is not at rights and it can sometimes take a monumental effort to recognize that we are capable of moving forward, making changes to the here and now. Perhaps our faith tradition at times has encouraged us to take our liminal present and to respond by disengaging. Instead, let us work to overcome that uncomfortableness and the feeling of “gritting our teeth because it will all be over soon”. Let us be people who truly engage with the present, who see the future glory of heaven and don’t just stop at simply saying “Lord come quickly” but who also strive to truly live out the oft repeated prayer: “Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven”.

Let us be people who don’t just simply say “Lord come quickly” but also strive to live out the oft repeated prayer: “Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven”.

This understanding of kingdom living has revitalized how I view my life and has challenged me to continually engage with the present and those around me, and reorients me to a center of the Christian faith -- engaging with, interacting with, and loving others, here, in the present, on this earth. Let us live out our liminal time on this earth by recognizing completely the reality of God’s kingdom, fully focused on moving towards the future of Heaven while always remembering the mission of the Church to bring the future promise of Heaven into the present.

Wright’s words have been encouraging to me as I continue to focus on engaging with the present in this time before Christ’s return. And once again, these author’s words are better than my own, so let me end with a couple of sections I’ve pulled from Surprised by Hope: