It’s an in-between time of year. There was a freeze last night and my outside plants are now surrounding me inside my warm home. They think it’s Spring. They’re eager to grow and bloom. They are unfurling into a new season.
Liminal Space is a concept I learned about this past hurricane season. It’s a time of in-between. It’s a sacred space. It’s a time of waiting, when you know things are changing, but they haven’t changed yet. It is often a time of discomfort, because all you know is that the life you know is unfurling. And you don’t know what the present is going to grow into.
I am in a season of unfurling. I am on the eve of retirement. I haven’t picked a date, but it is coming. I am not sure of what it will look like for me.
We measure time in hurricanes down here in the Deep South. August was the 16th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. A storm that permanently changed lives forever. We eat and drink and dance to excess here because we know it could all be blown away tomorrow. I came across the following words I wrote on the hot August morning after Hurricane Ida blew itself across Louisiana.
“I’m sitting on my front porch in the early dawn hours. The storm has moved on. It is quiet. The power is out and the sound of generators have not yet filled the air. The yard is filled with layers of green debris. I see my neighbor’s home has lost a bit of roof, but no blue tarp is needed. Another’s siding has come loose and is making a crackling sound in the wind. I can now see the studs on the fireplace chimney of the neighbor who has let his home decay over the last decade. A few industrious neighbors have already drug tree limbs to the front yard to eventually be picked up by some city service.
There’s no phone, no internet, no work today, no one walking or running by, no walking of dogs, or visiting of neighbors with new babies in strollers. I see my zinnias have been flattened to the ground, bringing a premature end to their summer glory. All I really know is how lucky I am.
I do not know how bad things are yet in Louisiana. Or if we dodged yet another bullet. So I sit in this quiet, sacred time, and am thankful for this present moment.”
We are all living in a Liminal Space.
When the pandemic eventually blows over, no one knows what the world will look like. It has been an unsettling time to work in healthcare. My life in unfurling as I transition from work to retirement. I feel great relief that I am leaving that work life. It is a sacred time as I imagine where my creative journey will take me.
Connie McLeod 