Fall is a transitional season. The brightness of summer has dimmed, but the long dark of winter still lies ahead. This is a liminal season, a time between when the old reality still informs our longing even while the new truth holds our hopes.

Liminal. A time between. An entrance. A threshold. A space in which both old and new are present, the boundary between them thins.

“…the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” T.S. Eliot, cousin of our founding minister, knew the power of liminal space and so do we.

Some of us, in this liminal time and liminal space, find ourselves drawn more to the past. We ridicule “Make America Great Again” with good reason in my view, but all of us have nostalgia for some parts of the past.

As I watched the images of congressmen (and they were almost all men, and all white) forcing their way into a secure hearing room at the Capital, mimicking the protests that progressives have used for decades, I found myself offended by their appropriation of “our” tactics. A sit-in, for me, will always be a principled action taken in the face of some risk…not a stunt. I have nostalgia for protests that moved us forward and for the brief moments of “Yes, we can” in our more recent past.

Others of us, and most who will read these words, are drawn more to the future, to a vision of Beloved Community which may still remain inchoate, but which becomes clearer with each movement forward over that liminal threshold. We tend to focus on the flaws of the past, rather than its glories, and the hope we find in imagining ways to correct those flaws.

There is a quality of presence this season invites. Presence to the sadness of that which is passing away. Presence to the excitement of that which is being born. Presence to the all too frequent and sometimes jarring transitions between the two that the thin boundary makes possible.

In whatever way you care for yourself, I hope that you can find ways to care for yourself in these days. Many of us enter this fall worn down by personal concerns and by the danger and dysfunction in our world. Perhaps more worn down than in past years.

Liminal space is challenging space to live through. There is loss to recognize and to grieve. But it is also a space of magic and miracle as connections are reformed and new hope calls us forward.

Find ways to care for yourselves and for those you love. And in this time between, this time of change, remember what abides. In the words of St. Paul, which we call up every Sunday:

“Faith, hope and love abide, these three. But the greatest of these is love.” (I Corinthians 13:13)

Blessings,

Bill