Day 34

Apr 22

34 days in, yet very much still suspended within this container of 40 days.

Still in the process of becoming, of creating or refreshing or solidifying this daily practice thing for ourselves.

Perhaps we’ve learned and integrated some big lessons at this point. Many of us are still very much in the process of collecting them. And just close enough to the “end” to wonder, “What’s next?”

There's a word for this middle point.

Liminal.

I first read the word in Terry Tempest Williams's memoir When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice, where she writes, among many beautiful things: "Liminal. A threshold. My body between worlds."

And it captured me. Gave me letters to string together for that in-between, transitional place I often (always?) seem to find myself in.

Liminal.

Liminality.

Say these words out loud, let them roll around in your mouth.

And if you don't already feel what they mean, you are now beckoned to discover.

Liminal comes from the Latin for "threshold."

It holds not only the experience of passing through, but also the qualities of uncertainty, even disorientation, that can mark the middle of a rite of passage.

When you no longer hold the old title and rituals of the former state but have not yet completed the rite, have not yet walked through the doorway into what's next.

Remember back to the summer vacation between grades? You're no longer... an eighth-grader. Not yet a high schooler.

The natural preparation period of pregnancy is liminal, particularly with a first child. No longer not a parent, not quite yet a parent.

Liminality holds the process of becoming, fraught, at times, with all its ambiguity.

Perhaps this moment in time feels like a liminal one for you too.

We're still in the doorway, hindsight and 33 days of practice might show us what we're leaving behind, before our exploration of daily practice, but it's not quite time to pick up the reigns of what's next and try this on our own. To reemerge into the cycle to come beyond these 40 days together.

If you're feeling any ambiguity right now, perhaps you can place it in the container of liminality.

"There's a word for this!"

A revelation that makes me feel as alive and awe-struck as my toddler (discovering anything new, which is all day long).

I wonder how this feels for you?

Perhaps your practice today is sitting with this concept, even journaling about this concept.

Today’s 17-minute meditation invites us to practice staying in that “suspended space” of our emotions of allowing ourselves to feel what we feel, and practice being with the experience of what we find about ourselves in any moment we might bring our attention.

Day 34

leave a comment! Today’s meditation is a powerful practice of remembering an emotion and staying with it. How did it feel to work with the emotions in this way?

Day 35

Day 33