Barnabas File

I have just completed the first of two eye surgeries that remove cataracts and implant a new lens in each eye.   This is a time of transition.   The vision in one eye is improved significantly while the other remains the same as before.   My old eyeglasses work great for the eye that has not had surgery, but not at all for the one with the new lens.   The transition will continue through the next surgery on the other eye and for some time after. This is a liminal space for me.  Alan Roxburgh introduced me to the idea of liminality.  In a ritual, this is the state of being on the threshold from one way of doing life to another.  One is almost there but not yet. It is a time of disorientation, stress, and promise. The nation of Israel experienced liminal space as they passed through the wilderness. They were no longer slaves but they were not yet what God had called them to be. Parents experience this liminal space when ch...

Have you ever watched a trapeze act?   The most thrilling part is when the artist builds momentum on a one trapeze and then lets go and launches herself through the air to be caught by a person on another trapeze. This requires physical agility, synchronization, and a bit of faith! When this happens, the trapeze artist is in a state of liminality.  Alan Roxburgh introduced me to this sociological term.  Liminality is the condition of being in transition between two states.  It is the transitional time between what is known and what is unknown. Few people like being in such an indeterminate state, but we have all done it at various times in our lives—leaving home to attend college; resigning from one job to take another; getting married and leaving behind the single life for a new relationship; retiring from a comfortable job and entering the uncertainty in leaving the workforce.  We do this because we hope for a better future, want to...

"Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are, quite naturally, impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages, we are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet, it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability . . . and that it may take a very long time."--Pierre Teilhard de Chardin I am not a particularly patient person.  From a family perspective, I came by it naturally and I have probably passed it on.  Therefore, when I read these words I am confronted with the truth that some things take time to come to fruition and that period of time involved may be punctuated by turbulence.  Passages are rarely as quick and easy as we would wish them to be.  As my grandchildren often ask plaintively, “Are we there yet?” Churches face this temptation to rush forward when a pastor leaves and to get a new person as soon as possible....