Friday, December 2, 2016

Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture- November 26, 2016- Liminality Of Beginnings

“It has become clear to us that liminality is not only transition but also potentiality, not only “going to be” but also “what may be” (Turner and Turner 3).


Going out of my room this morning from just waking up, I passed through a doorway into different possibilities of what my future could look like. Every choice impacted my inner walk and outer future. From the doorway, I could choose to follow my desire to go to the bathroom, or make breakfast, or go straight into work that needed to be done. Each decision has an impact on the next without even consciously knowing or realizing. Just like physics, a ball on a steep slope has the most potential energy on the top of the slope rather than on the bottom of the slope. The threshold crossed becomes a possibility of opportunities to invest in, throughout the day, like a chain reaction. We often plan our days and lives with a very narrow perspective of what we want or want to do and how we are going to get it or achieve it, thus limiting ourselves and our potential to things that could be even greater. There are many reasons, but the main overarching one is that we choose to control our lives the best way we can because we believe that we honestly can, giving us security about ourselves inwardly and externally. However, plans usually fail, and agendas most times do not get done for reasons outside of our control whether to our good or bad. Many people have fixations on things that they are hoping are “going to be” but do not realize that there may be another path to the satisfaction desired. To most people, secure transitions are usually more appetizing than gambling potentials, but what is more important, the thresholds crossed or the journeys along the way? Hypothetically, let’s say a woman crosses the threshold of her younger years and goes away to college with the goal to cross another threshold of the graduation stage with a degree that will make her lots of money even if it does not really make her happy. But, while there, she meets an honest, hard working man that makes her happy. They fall in love and get married altering her degree in some way or another to a field of study that does not make a lot of money. She then starts to work with the husband with a business that he has. I’m sure it has happened somewhere. So her chief desire to transition into a degree and make money was the threshold to put her on a potential path that, in the end, was positive for her. So the threshold was the beginning of an outcome that turned a “going to be” to a “what may be”. The expectations we place on our lives become the bridge to the other side, but the question remains: where do you go after you get to the other side?

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