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Lenten series
Liminial space Days without answers in a narrow space
This is the first of a series of Lenten reflections. It is
published early for the convenience of those who choose to use it in discussion
groups during Lent.
By RICHARD ROHR
But there will be a door and I will open it and I will get
rid of the rat inside of me, the gnawing pestilential rat. God will take
it with his two hands and embrace it.
-- Anne Sexton, The
Awful Rowing Toward God
For the past 15 years I have been studying everything I could on
the once universal phenomenon of initiation rites. It seems that almost all
primal cultures considered them absolutely necessary for spiritual survival,
especially for males and for the common good. Yet the Christian world has
falsely assumed that its sacraments of initiation were doing the
job, and these once-necessary rites of passage have fallen into almost complete
oblivion in the so-called civilized countries. The results are disastrous, and
the negative effects are everywhere. We can no longer assume that elders are
really elders, that leaders and politicians have a minimal
spiritual or human maturity, or that youth have been mentored into some kind of
adults. In fact, we have come to expect the exact opposite. This is not
good.
We who think of ourselves as the upholders of tradition in the
churches are largely out of touch with the Great Tradition. All truly
traditional peoples had discovered that when structure is not countered by
anti-structure or liminal space, the result is spiritual blindness,
one-sided thinking that tries to pass for wisdom but is only cosmetic piety. In
all the native spirituality movements, there seems to be a longing -- and maybe
a need -- to return to what Karl Jaspers (The Origin and Goal of
History) called the Pre-Axial period of history, when things
were still communitarian, nature-based and transformative.
The Axial period of the last 2,500 years has largely repressed
intuitive and universal traditions for the sake of managed and heady
traditions. Not all bad, but they seem to be faltering now. Every country I go
to, people are searching out Celtic, Aboriginal and native roots to ground
their experience of Christianity.
My readings of people like Mircea Eliade (Rites and Symbols of
Initiation, The Sacred and the Profane) and Victor Turner (The Ritual
Process) and countless others have convinced me that through initiation
rites we have a very clear pattern for really understanding the exodus and the
exile, Jesus in the desert, the training of the disciples, suffering itself,
religious life, liturgy, the church as a real alternative, and, in this case,
Lent as a season.
I will be using the weeks of Lent to unpack these ideas in a very
sketchy manner. Obviously, this forum does not allow for footnotes and covering
all my bases, but I trust that the framework offered will be so exciting and
promising that many of you will be eager to do your own further homework.
We Catholics know that the Latin word limina means
threshold, from the ad limina visits of our bishops to the doorstep of
Peter in Rome. Liminality is a special psychic and spiritual place where
all transformation happens. It is when we are betwixt and between, and
therefore by definition not in control. Nothing new happens as long
as we are inside our self-constructed comfort zone. Nothing good or creative
emerges from business as usual. Much of the work of the God of the Bible is to
get people into liminal space, and to keep them there long enough so they can
learn something essential. It is the ultimate teachable space, maybe the only
one. Most spiritual giants try to live lives of chronic liminality
in some sense. They know it is the only position that insures ongoing wisdom,
broader perspective and ever-deeper compassion. The Jewish prophets, Socrates
and Diogenes, Jesus, Francis, Buddha, Gandhi, virgins and hermitesses, the
Hindu sanyassi, the Native shamans immediately come to mind.
But for most of us who cannot run off to the wilderness or the
hermitage, religions offer temporary and partial liminality in things like
Ramadan, pilgrimages, silent retreats, wilderness journeys and sacred spaces
such as Lent. Once-a-week church services do not usually come close to creating
liminal space. It takes that long to stop wondering whether you turned off the
gas stove and to even begin to get the kids -- or your errant emotions -- under
control. There has to be something longer, different and daring, non-sensical,
anti-structure, to explain the meaning of the assumed structure. It
is almost always counterintuitive, and not logical or sensible at all.
The bubble of order has to be broken by a bit of whimsy and by
deliberately walking in the opposite direction. Here we need to not-do,
not-perform according to successful patterns, fail, fast and deliberately
falter. Not eat instead of eat -- what could be more counter to normal
patterns? Silence instead of talking, emptiness instead of fullness. In liminal
space we descend and intentionally do not ascend, status reversal
instead of status-seeking. Shadow boxing instead of ego confirmation. It is
what we mean by death or even mortification in
traditional spiritual language. It is fairly universal language.
In a liminal Lent we choose the chaos of the unconscious over the
control of explanations and answers. The language of the Lenten readings is the
language of darkness not light, desert not garden. People have to be taught how
to live there. Without good spiritual direction, you will run. Without
encouragement ahead of time, you will assume you are doing something wrong and
will seek a quick reordering to take away the anxiety. We have to be taught how
to stay in liminal space. It is always holy ground, but it actually takes a
while to get those shoes off. Forty days is probably a minimum. And I must warn
you, one of the most effective ways to avoid liminal space is to be super
religious on the right or super correct on the left -- and reconfirm all your
needed securities.
If we are security needy by temperament, we will always run back
to the old room that we have already constructed. If we are risk-taking by
temperament, we will quickly run to a new room of our own making and liking.
Hardly anyone wants to stay on the threshold without answers. It is
a narrow place that few know how to inhabit (Matthew 7:13). In my experience,
liberals are no better than conservatives in this regard. We both like our own
rooms and our own answers. Neither of us likes to live in the insecurity of not
knowing. True Biblical faith will always be a rare occurrence, in my
experience. God has to teach you how to live there. I think that is why we have
always said that faith is a gift.
The most common substitute for liminal space is
liminoid space. I must admit that organized religion is expert at
offering people the liminoid. It feels like the real thing, it feels different
while actually reaffirming ego and persona. It is the much-touted trip to poor
Guatemala, where you stay in the American four star hotel! It is cosmetic and
devotional piety that reassures me that I am already and indeed one, holy,
Roman Catholic and apostolic. It is a movement into trance and
unconsciousness so that nothing real will be revealed and where the shadow has
no possibility of showing itself. In my experience as presider at parish
Masses, there seem to be two clear types attending: the catatonics
and those who are always ready to be awestruck. Any preacher or parish priest
knows that this is true, even though it is hard to say. The catatonics are
actually disturbed if you make the gospel or the Eucharist make any sense in
the real world. Those ready to be awestruck, usually in the minority, thank you
profusely for just showing up.
True liminality, true Lent, leads to increased awareness,
increased consciousness of the pain and the goodness -- your own and others --
and increased knowledge of the shadow, too. Who would go there willingly? I
wouldnt. You have to be led, or, like Jesus, you have to be driven
by the Spirit into the wilderness (Mark 1:12). Because first we must meet
the wild beasts and only later do angels minister to
him (1:13). No one wants to wait for the true angels. We would rather
manufacture plastic, churchy ones and bypass the truly present wild beasts.
Lent is 40 days of training in living with and learning from the wild beasts.
Sort of a chosen three-ring circus and a deliberate refusal to retreat to the
spectators grandstand. We intentionally sequester the angels for six
weeks.
We cannot expect such daring from the secular system, but when the
church itself offers us merely the secure old room or the trendy new room, I
know we are in trouble spiritually. Our liturgies become mere ceremony and not
truly sacred, transformative or initiatory space. Church becomes membership
requirements instead of any kind of truly new creation. Priesthood
becomes priestcraft, and religious life becomes a charade of an alternative
because no real alternative has been seen or experienced. Spiritual leadership
from people who have made the journey themselves is rare. This is what we will
be talking about in these weeks of Lent.
The stakes are too high now. We cannot play around with religion
and spirituality any longer. These patterns of spiritual initiation do not
change. They are primeval and permanent and paschal. We need a good, liminal,
and transformative Lent. We need some anti-structure to make sense out of the
structure that is trapping us all.
Franciscan Fr. Richard Rohr, popular speaker and author, is
founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation, Albuquerque, N.M.
National Catholic Reporter, February 1,
2002
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