Liminal spaces – a waiting time

Easter Saturday and Consensus Building

Liminal spaces are essential in life. What can Easter Saturday teach us about how to do discernment? For these ideas, I am indebted to my colleague, Rev Dr John Squires. John wrote a very fine post at Easter called: “A time in-between the times, a space in no space.”

In his reflection, he observed that “Easter Saturday is a liminal space. The word liminal comes from the Latin word līmen, which means “a threshold”. Technically, that is the place that marks off one space from another.” For the first disciples, there was something slow, cautious and anxious about Easter Saturday. For today’s Christians, there is a waiting hopefulness that there is something to celebrate after Easter Saturday. For all, it is a time in between – neither one thing nor the other.

You can’t rush from Good Friday to Easter Sunday – one just has to wait in hope. There are no shortcuts – it takes time and patience.

Consensus building discernment has these times of waiting. Times between what is known and what might be. This is the creative moment where God is doing God’s work while we stand by helpless – except in our patience and hopefulness.

Liminal spaces – waiting for God

I know so many people who resist using consensus discernment because they can’t cope with the uncertainty. Consensus discernment is a process that requires us to let go of what we know and to wait in hope. Built into it is uncertainty!

Instead many people like to stay with what they know – never letting go of their points of view and the importance they give to their experience. Many people cannot let go of their preferred solution. So they stay mired in the present and the future is lost to them.

Others want to rush to the next idea, a great plan, a quick fix that will remove the tension of not knowing what to do. For these people there is no “time between time” and they cannot find “a space in no space.”

However, the way to God’s future so often requires patience and waiting!! Instead of clinging to the past or rushing to our idea of the future, consensus-building invites us to wait. The waiting is not passive or lazy. This waiting is expectant, attentive to the movement of the Holy Spirit and patiently waiting for God to do what we cannot do in our human strength and wisdom. Discernment needs its Easter Saturday experiences.

What to do in the liminal spaces

Like the disciples – be together. Stay connected to the community of discernment and support each other.

Do not pretend that it is easy to wait for discernment to come – because a lot of times it isn’t! Share honestly the experience of loss and grief that comes with the realization that things are being put to death.

Reach out to the God who has brought you to this liminal space of waiting – keep praying and engaging in spiritual disciplines.

Don’t try and come up with a quick fix – there probably isn’t one! In patience imagine all the possibilities and then let God surprise you with the gift of new insight and a future that you could never have made happen.

Conclusion

As John Squires observed: “On this Saturday, the day in between Friday and Sunday, we look back at what was lost … and we yearn for what is yet to be.” Consensus-based discernment is a spiritual practice that can mirror the Easter experience. Yes, there is loss, waiting, anxiety and uncertainty – but ultimately there is new life by the grace and work of God.