It ought to be clear by now from recent events, to people to whom control is all-important, that our grip on control is shaky. Resuming control moreover, or at least the semblance of it, is problematic. Others of us have little difficulty understanding this… anyone whose life has been changed by the pandemic and lockdown, anyone who has sat with a very sick child, anyone who has been swept along by warfare, anyone in the grip of an addiction, anyone in dependent old age winding up in some care facility… You are not in control, possibly feeling helpless, perhaps humiliated.
Richard Rohr’s Five Hard Truths are intended as statements about the nature of human life, however. He is saying that anyone who imagines they control destiny and events, even in their immediate family, tribe, church or social circle, is actually deluded. Numerous powerful people in history have found that out eventually. In pandemic and lockdown we were suddenly reminded of this hard truth. Those of us relatively privileged are reminded also of the increasing numbers of people powerless, pandemic or not, over security of employment and income, needing to put food on the table and feed children, unable to afford health care, deprived of basic rights, prey to exploitation – and in some places existing in refugee colonies amid squalor, hunger and disease.
Powerlessness has always been a human issue. It is reflected in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures such as the Book of Job and parts of the Psalms, with their narratives of affliction, injustice, cruelty, alienation. Slavery comes in many forms besides the institution abolished by law… for instance in addiction. The first of AA’s Twelve Steps says: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable. That inner admission of loss of control, acceptance of the situation, is the first and indispensable step in recovery. Other forms of powerlessness have been accentuated by the lockdown… the plight of many women, children, elderly folks, subject to domestic abuse and violence.
Now, the current crisis has led to the introduction of a new word among our contemplative teachers… actually an old word redeployed: liminal, from the Latin limen meaning a threshold, a border, doorstep, a place of crossing or of change.[1] We are in a liminal time, they are saying. The instinct of most is to get out of it as soon as we can, resume “normality” and familiarity, feel safe again. Obviously, governments and scientists and I suppose economists must talk about “getting on top” of this virus, as they put it. But contemplatives recognise also the kairos, the “liminality”. The old remedies and principles, the old shibboleths, won’t suffice now, even if we apply them harder, longer and louder. It is a time, says Sarah Bachelard, for stillness, silence and discernment among Jesus’s people.
[2]
What are we to do at such a threshold moment? … In moments of transition, we are simply to be. We are to pause and acknowledge that a transition is taking place. Instead of seeking to abruptly pass through a threshold, we are to tarry… A new reality is emerging, but we cannot see beyond the threshold. All we know is that we exist in this moment, where everything is in transition. We may experience a new way of being, but we cannot yet sense what it will look like.[3] In Richard Rohr’s words, we are …into a situation that we can’t fix, can’t control, and can’t explain or understand. That’s where transformation most easily happens.
The border is not a safe place, ever. It is not a place of control or even the illusion of control. That is our theme today: We are not in control. It is a place of migration and migrants, border-crossing, strangeness, strangers and pilgrims, transition and change, newness and difference. It is where you may have to alter your ideas or opinions. It is where Jesus’s people are to be found, laughing with those who laugh and weeping with those who weep. It is not a place of solutions but of faith. In liminal space and time we may see things Jesus saw… people living without erecting walls… people flourishing without exploiting the earth, air and water, not wasting, not plundering the environment… people preferring, in the words of the Hebrew prophet, mercy, justice, humility…
APPENDIX – Extract from Rebecca Solnit in The Guardian Weekly, 24.4.20, “Hope in a Time of Crisis”…
But this is also a time of depth for those spending more time at home and more time alone, looking outward at this unanticipated world. We often divide emotions into good and bad, happy and sad, but I think they can equally be divided into shallow and deep, and the pursuit of what is supposed to be happiness is often a flight from depth, from one’s own interior life and the suffering around us – and not being happy is often framed as a failure. But there is meaning as well as pain in sadness, mourning and grief, the emotions born of empathy and solidarity. If you are sad and frightened, it is a sign that you care, that you are connected in spirit. If you are overwhelmed – well, it is overwhelming, and it will take decades of study, analysis, discussion and contemplation to understand how and why 2020 suddenly took us all into marshy new territory.
[1] English
words such as limit, limitation, come from limen. Think of it when you call someone the dizzy
limit… Interestingly also perhaps is the
currently important word “crisis” – it comes from the Greek krisis which
means a crossroads, a place where you have to make choices.
[2] Sarah
Bachelard: Series of six video talks, http://www.wccm.org/content/visit-special-website-contemplative-path-through-crisis
[3] Brandan
J. Robertson: On the Threshold of Tomorrow, Liminal Space.
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