Happy Thanksgiving! This is a season of transition, and we are in what some would call “liminal” or “threshold” space between seasons, election cycles, and in our liturgical calendar, between Pentecost and Advent. The etymology of “threshold” is from the Latin, “Limen.” It describes states, times, spaces, etc., that exist at a point of transition or change—a metaphorical threshold—as in “the liminal zone between sleep and wakefulness.” The British psychiatrist Donald Winnicott focused on what he called the “transitional, potential spaces” between the developing infant and mother as the infant grows out of the state of psychological fusion with the mother, and discovers a sense of self, and the ability to symbolize, and create meaning. This includes our theological musings.
During threshold seasons such as Advent, something addresses us, prompts us, calls us, pushes us, pulls us into a relationship with itself. Transitional, liminal space is where we experience life in a lively way that feels real to us and where we discover new ways of seeing our lives. I would suggest that this includes those aspects of our lives that are dissonant and where we may be in conflict. It is from and within this space that we encounter each other, in our common finitude, and we bring forth a sense of wonder about all of those who inhabit that space with us. Indeed, liminal space in this sense is given meaning through the broader community, such as therapeutic spaces, and yes, our own beloved Holy Family parish, where we are called to go forth into the world as the Body of Christ.
Images and metaphors of transitional, potential space are common in literature and film. Examples of such liminal spaces are 9 3/4 Victoria Station, from which point Harry Potter and his fellow Hogwarts Schoolmates journey to their destination. C.S. Lewis employed the use of the wardrobe as the “threshold” through which the children made their way to Narnia. In the work of J.R.R. Tolkein, waterways and “middle earth” are chthonic, transitional places. Akira Kurosawa’s lovely short film “Dreams” is a remarkable, wondrous cinematic evocation of liminal space in living color and an invitation to find those places where we are fully alive:
Akira Kurosawa – Dreams Van Gogh
And Madeline L’Engle’s children’s book “A Wrinkle in Time,” employs the use of the transitional space known as a “tesseract,” whereby the children travel from one mode of being to another. Liturgically, Holy Saturday is an in-between, transitional space as well, not to be “resolved” or rushed through, but rather inhabited—being with the other, as opposed to doing. May we all be such travelers as this, with friends and family to accompany us.
Threshold seasons and liminal spaces can sometimes be scary, and we may feel caught between fear and lethargy. Perhaps one antidote to this is the power of gratitude. As a professor and clinician, I have long been interested in how we define illness and psychopathology, yes, but also in what makes us well, resilient, and in those conditions under which we are likely to flourish as human beings who seek to be “fully alive” as God created us to be. I am especially intrigued by those cases in which, against all odds due to illness and other constraints, people do in fact seem to thrive and flourish with resilience. Gratitude is one of the features of such cases.
In a fascinating study with the intriguing title “Counting Blessings Versus Burdens: An Experimental Investigation of Gratitude and Subjective Well-Being in Daily Life,” Emmons and McCullough, the two primary researchers in the study, set out to measure the effects of a grateful outlook on psychological and physical well-being. The word gratitude, derived from the Latin gratia, meaning grace, or gratefulness, has been defined as “the willingness to recognize the unearned increments of value in one’s experience.” Some studies have indicated that this is a two-step process—the recognition of this gift, and recognition that there is an external source of it.
Indeed, some researchers have linked this to a capacity for empathy—which implies an ability to engage in deeper levels of “feeling with” others, and to compassion. Among the findings in this study was the recognition of what the authors refer to as an “upward spiral” in the relationship between gratitude and well-being. Some have called this the “learning curve of gratitude.” This gratitude, they suggest, can lead to a broadening of mindsets and the building up of enduring personal resources. It inspires what they call “pro-social reciprocity,” increasing well-being as it builds psychological, social, and, yes, spiritual resources. And, put slightly differently, gratitude can participate in healing, both our own, and that of a broken world. The Latin root of “healing” is salve—from which we get our word “salvation.” Gratitude can “save us” from ourselves and heal those things that keep us separated from each other, and from God.
Our fellow Episcopalian and poet Mary Oliver writing on her learning curve of gratitude, put it this way:
Why worry about the loaves and fishes?
If you say the right words, the wine expands.
If you say them with love
and the felt ferocity of that love
and the felt necessity of that love,
the fish explode into many.
Imagine him, speaking,
and don’t worry about what is reality,
or what is plain, or what is mysterious.
If you were there, it was all those things.
If you can imagine it, it is all those things.
Eat, drink, be happy.
Accept the miracle.
Accept, too, each spoken word
spoken with love.
Logos~ Mary Oliver
This is a vision of Thanksgiving, and church, and hospitality that I can live with, and into, with gratitude.
Happy Thanksgiving! I’ll catch you later down the trail, and I hope to see you in church. Bill+