As Richard Rohr describes in his article titled 'Grieving as Sacred Space' - the opposite of control is not non-control or giving up. The opposite of control is actually participation - he calls it "the contemplative stance." What Rohr means by liminal is the space betwixt and between. It is when you have left the "tried and true" but have not yet been able to replace it with anything else. It is when you are finally out of the way. It is when you are in between your old comfort zone and any possible new answer. It is no fun.
IF YOU ARE NOT trained in how to hold anxiety, how to live with ambiguity, how to entrust and wait-you will run-or more likely you will "explain." Not necessarily a true explanation, but any explanation is better than scary liminal space. Anything to flee from this terrible "cloud of unknowing." Those of a more fear-based nature will run back to the old explanations. Those who love risk or hate thought will often quickly construct a new explanation where they can feel special and again in control. Few of us know how to stay on the threshold. You just feel stupid there-and we are all trying to say something profound these days.
EVERYTHING GENUINELY NEW emerges in some kind of liminal space. It feels aimless: "Which group do I belong to? What side do I take in the conversation?" One risks looking not just stupid but actually uncaring or unaware if one does not take sides. One should have a meaningful place to stand, after all. It does settle a bit of the dust, the floating dust of fear and anxiety. It is a hard place to be-a narrow road that few walk. It is so humiliating and unsettling these days to neither wave the unifying flag nor have a clear answer either-even about the flag waving.
TRUE SACRED SPACE grounds us around one undeniable Reference Point that is bigger and beyond any of us. It is the "tree of life", the axis mundi of all primitive peoples. This magnetic north is never doubted in sacred space, even if it cannot always be named, accessed, or even understood. Such alignment situates us correctly in the universe-with a clear reference point outside the individual ego, the cultural mood, and one's passing feelings. Sacred space is by definition liminal space. Because we are not in control and not the center, something genuinely new can happen. Here we are capable of seeing something beyond self-interest, self-will, and security concerns. True sacred space allows an alternative consciousness to emerge.
WE MUST TEACH people not to get rid of the pain until we have learned what it has to teach us. Not what it has to teach others! This is liminal and transformative space. Much of our understandable anger is actually disguised and denied sadness. Life should not be this way, but it always has been for most of humanity.
THE PREFERRED LANGUAGE of both the Christian and the Muslim mystics is the language of darkness. They are most at home in the realm of not-knowing. Often, therefore, it was called "luminous darkness." In such darkness, things are more spacious, freer, and more open to creative response.
Listen, for example, to Hafiz, the Persian poet mystic:
Don't surrender your loneliness
So quickly.
Let it cut more deep.
Let it ferment and season you
As few human
Or even divine ingredients can.
Something missing in my heart tonight
Has made my eyes so soft,
My voice
So tender,
My need of God
Absolutely
Clear.
So instead of giving people answers, of being drawn into the problem-solution disempowerment trap, lead people to the dilemmas of life, to their threshold of non-control, to the point of participation.
For more on this article click on http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/1266.htm
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