#9 - A State of Change {Reflections}

What is up everybody?

My name is Ryan on the Pastor at Central, and welcome back to our Reflections podcast Today.

By the way, this is Mike Lauer.

What's up, mike?

Hey, it's a little bit cooler today than it was yesterday, went from like 90 something to 68 or whatever.

But here we are in Minnesota, which reminds me.

I got a letter from a friend of mine a dear friend of mine not too long ago, and here's how he opened the letter.

He said Ryan, in September this is a couple of years ago a routine physical.

At a routine physical he was advised that he needed some additional testing.

He says I was informed two weeks after that that I needed to have open heart surgery During my recovery from bypass surgery.

So this is weeks later.

My company was sold and when I returned, four months after that, I was fired.

They wanted nothing to do with the 65 year old national account executive with top pay scale, nine weeks vacation and, unfortunately now a heart issue.

It was a terrible blow to my ego and it reminded me and in this time he goes on to write that at this time in his life everything was upside down.

Everything he had known was now gone and the future was entirely open.

He had no idea what to do next.

We sort of stuck in this place in the in between, the not here, but not yet something new, and it reminded me of the Jonah story.

Jonah, of course, if you remember the story, was called by God to go to Nineveh.

He doesn't want to go there for all kinds of good reasons.

He runs in the exact opposite direction, while there a storm comes up, because sometimes when you run from God storms, the seas get stormy, and so then the man on the boat realizes Jonah's fault, they throw him overboard and he ends up in the belly of the whale, upside down in the darkness, in this tomb like place, has no idea what's going on.

He's not where he was, he's not where he's going to be.

Of course we know he ends up in Nineveh, but he's in this upside down place, like my friend after getting this news.

I mean having open heart surgery, getting fired from a job, everything's upside down now.

And there's this ancient idea that encapsulates both of these.

It's called liminal space, and liminal space is this idea that you're not quite here, not quite there.

It actually comes from the Latin word, which is lemon, and Latin lemon means threshold.

It's sort of this in between, in between place, and people generally don't go to these places as a destination or to stay.

It's really a connection between two separate destinations and so liminal space my friend Jack calls.

He describes it like a trapeze artist who is flying through the air and let's go over the one wrong of their swing and it's flying to the next wrong.

But they're like right in between, like if you were to freeze frame a moment of a trapeze artist flying from one wrong to the next, but they're floating just midair.

They're not yet to the next wrong they have, but they've already let go of the other wrong and they're just floating that moment.

Right.

There is liminal space.

It's just in between time, where you're not really meant to stay there, but there you are.

It's like Jonah and the belly of the whale, joseph who's thrown in the well.

His brothers betray him and throw him into the bottom of the well, jesus in the desert or, of course, jesus in the tomb.

I've done several retreats where I go out in the wilderness and I'm just out there for several days just doing all kinds of stuff.

These are liminal spaces.

There's also like a physical design, as like I don't know what you'd call it Mike, but like, like, there are physical spaces that are liminal spaces, like airports, and airport is a great liminal space.

Hallways are liminal spaces.

Nobody goes to the hallway to hang out or like watch a movie.

They use the hallways and transition waiting rooms, elevators.

These are liminal spaces.

And also in our lives there are things that kind of create liminal space, like a divorce and getting fired, like my good friend, the death of a loved one, making a decision when you haven't made the decision, that's liminal space.

When you're right on the verge of making a decision, that could be life altering or transformational.

When one thing ends and another thing begins, that's liminal space.

And there are lots of things that mark or sort of define liminal spaces.

Many times liminal spaces can appear eerie or strange.

There's this phenomenon when designers will talk about hallways and many times hallways appear kind of eerie to us, or stairwells, or elevator, empty elevators.

They're kind of odd.

There are other things that mark liminal spaces.

They're really.

It's a time of uncertainty.

Maybe there's anxiety, disorientation, confusion, discomfort.

There's a tension within these liminal spaces.

You know, when you find yourself in the belly of a whale, metaphorically, in life there's often tension, discomfort, confusion.

St John of the Cross.

He actually called these dark nights of the soul and he said the purpose of these is to strip us of our futile attempts to find God on our own terms and to awaken us to a much simpler desire for intimacy with God.

And St John would say this is a time of purging, of letting go and seeing what arises.

So liminal spaces by definition, oftentimes, if we allow them, will provoke deep questions in life.

It's like what has God up to?

What is my life all about?

Where am I headed?

Who am I?

Even?

These are deep questions that often arise in these kinds of places.

For Jonah, for Joseph, for me, for my friend who got fired, these are great questions to be asking ourselves, and in that way they're actually moments of grace.

They're a provisional moment of grace and they provide opportunities or chances for us to grow and grow deeper.

And the question isn't like how do I fix this?

How do I get out of the whale?

Rather it's what might I learn from or glean from this moment?

What work is there to be done in my soul in this moment?

And so there are really opportunities for spiritual awakening, you might say for resurrection.

So there's this great commentator on the Old Testament, who and she writes about Jonah.

Salvation is not in the first instance God taking us out of our mess.

Rather, it's God meeting us within our mess.

Jonah will find salvation within his watery grave, for there, in the place which eloquently speaks of death, god will meet him.

And so God does not seem in any kind of hurry to remove Jonah out of the belly.

God has work to do in Jonah, and it's in that moment, out of the belly of the whale, in that liminal space, jonah finds God and vice versa, and Jonah finds salvation.

And it's really cool in the Hebrew, the word for belly there is the word bala, which means belly, but it also could be rendered as the word for womb.

And so in this watery grave, this belly of the whale, this dark night of the soul, in this liminal space, is potential for new birth.

So the question, of course, is what do we do then?

Well, in the belly of the whale, jonah, for example.

He has to confront his own darkness, his own self.

He must lean into, if you will, his own death, and he can't run like, where's he going to run now?

He has nowhere to run, he can't hide, and that won't even help him.

He has to confront the darkness, and there in the darkness, in the liminal space, he has to cry out to God.

And so I always encourage folks who find themselves in these liminal spaces in life don't go anywhere, sit tight and cry out to God and be awake as possible.

This is the in-between, the liminal space, the sacred, sacred place, and if you move too fast through it or try to alleviate the pain or the discomfort, you might miss what God wants to do in your life.

And so these are places to let whatever old things needed to die away, let them die and let them go, let them be washed away as a place of transformation.

So the question is what might arise now and here, and what is God doing in this belly of the whale?

And so in this belly, of course, it involves changes to the ego or to the persona, or to the sense of identity, or our connection to the world, or to the soul, or even to God.

And so, in all of these places, have your eyes wide open, and if you're in the belly of the whale, I would ask you what things do you need to let go of or let die in order that you might live?

What is God trying to show you or teach you, or reveal to you?

What are you clinging to that you no longer need to cling to any longer?

Or maybe you're in the belly of the whale or in this liminal space and you just need to hear that, even though it feels like death, nothing in fact can separate you from the love of God and Christ Jesus, because it's in the darkness that God wants to meet with you.

So, friends, if you are in liminal space now, or if anytime soon, let me know and I encourage you, hang tight, embrace the time, go slow and cry out to God and let go of what things that need to die and embrace what might be coming on.

All right, grace and peace to you.

Love you bye.

Hey, if you enjoy this show, I'd love to have you share it with some friends.

And don't forget, you are always welcome to join us in person at Central in Elk River at 8.30, which is our liturgical gathering, or at 10 o'clock, our modern gathering, or you can check us out online at clclcriverorg.

Peace.