Liminal Space in the Wilderness

“Liminal space” is one of those phrases that I believe has been misused and over-used. I have experienced folks using the term to talk about an “in-between” space, which is not completely wrong. I have also witnessed people use it to describe a “thin space” without really defining what that might mean. Again, the idea (as I understand it) is not completely wrong. Yet both approaches miss some of the nuance of what the idea of “liminal space” can really speak to. Leaning on Victor Turner’s work (“Betwixt and Between” from Forest of Symbols), I look at the idea of a liminal space as not only a thin space, and/or a thin space, but one where change happens. Liminal space is not just a waiting room with inoffensive magazines, but a space where you are going through a change, entering one way and leaving a different.

The day after I was married I don’t think I considered that there was any kind of change that happened. I was never carried over a threshold. My spouse never offered to pick me up and carry me over the threshold after we exchanged our vows. And, to be fair, I never offered either. I suppose we could have held hands and stepped over the threshold together, but the idea never really occurred to us. I’m glad one didn’t carry the other because there are overtones of patriarchy in such a practice. However, there is something real about stepping over the threshold, stepping into the door or space. It is a way of moving from one space to another, but at the same time embracing the reality that a change has or is happening.  My spouse and I were related to each other in one way, but after our wedding day, even if it was only via formality and ritual, we were relating to each other and to the world in a different way. If we were to embrace the reality of the threshold, it would have been a liminal space.

I don’t know if folks consider the liminal moment when hiking or backpacking. The first step on a hike or backpacking trip is sometimes embraced with fanfare and pomp but often not. Everyone in the group has the pack on, has the straps tightened to what we all hope will be the right tightness. Everyone’s shoes are tied and sunscreen is applied. You see your transportation vehicle drive away and you take that breath, take in everything that you see, everything that you can experience, and then note the very first step. Maybe you pause before taking the first step. Maybe to ask for silence from the group and then line up so everyone can take that first step together. You can only take a first step once, so you want to make sure that it is done well and is noticed and celebrated. Maybe this is how you take your first step. This would be an acknowledgement that something is going to be different.

            Or maybe it is something that you fall into. It is something that you take trying to catch up with the rest of the group, still trying to adjust your pack-straps, still trying to get your hat just right. You are pulling on your boots, eating the rest of the sandwich that you bought on the drive to the trailhead and calling out with food spitting out of your mouth for everyone to wait up. And the first step happens without you really noticing it. The first step is more of a first stumble. There are no moments to recognize where you are, to take in the sights and smells. No moments to not that you are now entering into a different space. This is my experience more often than not, and when it happens I know that I am missing the liminality of the moment.

            We all take that first step into the wilderness. We all take that first step that is, in one way or another, removing us from the normal hustle and bustle of our lives and into a different space. You feel the pack on your back, you feel the weight, and you take that first step. You notice the ground you are now standing on, the dirt and the leaves and the mud, and into that you take your first step. It is not just a physical moment of putting one foot in front of the other, but a mental, emotional, and spiritual moment. That first step is a liminal moment when you are in-between where you were and where you hope to be going. Even if you have been on that trail before, hundreds of times, there is still a sense and reality of the unknown. You don’t know what you might see, what you might encounter, how you might be changed as you take that first step.

            How many truly liminal moments do we have in our lives? There are the ones that we ritually recognize in our families, faith lives, and elsewhere. Graduations mark a change, as does a baptism or a bar and bat mitzvah. The birth of a child is a liminal moment for not only the child but also for the parents. I believe it is important to name the change. It is important to be clear about what one is leaving and what one is becoming. You are no longer a student, you are no longer an outsider to the community, you are no longer someone who is going to get a lot of sleep. If we are not deliberate about the change that we are stepping into we can find ourselves still looking to cling to our former lives. There is nothing sadder than some who is 19 or 20 still going to High School gatherings and parties because they have not fully accepted that they are no longer in that space. In the wilderness there are those who try to bring comforts from the front-country, from that life with them. This usually means they will be carrying more things, working harder to embrace the life they had before walking onto the trail, and will not be fully present in the wilderness.

            It has been three years since I left the full-time pastorate and entered into the wilderness ministries. I have struggled and wrestled with calling myself a “wilderness pastor.” I have tossed and turned about being separate from a community that I have been a part of for almost all of my adult life. I still am not sure how to talk about who I am and what I do. And, I’m still working at a church. I’m working part-time at an Episcopal community which helps me pay the bills but I wonder if it is confusing and complicating my own sense of a liminal space. I wonder if I have been able to fully embrace a change, or if I am still hanging on. I wonder if I am reluctant to allow myself to be changed in a new and different environment. It is scary and I’m not sure if I can fully let go. Liminality can be a scary and difficult thing.

            Yet I still face it. I suppose I could try to go back to pastoring a church full-time and leave the way I came. But I will still be changed. The act of attempting to leave, the act of attempting to move into an unknown has left its own marks on me

            I share this so disabuse any notion that I am completely in control of what I am doing or that I even know fully what I am doing. This may be the most difficult part of a liminal space – we cannot control what it is that we are falling into. We cannot control the change that is happening. Change, liminality, is difficult. The path of least resistance is the easiest. But I want to encourage all to embrace change, to take a chance, and step across the threshold into something new. Be deliberate with what you are doing. Step into the wilderness, and try to let go. Try to enter into something new. And see what happens.