I just made the mistake of reading someone’s else’s blog before writing mine. Not that that is totally a bad thing. It’s just that it influences my thinking till I can process it and get it filed away somewhere in the nooks and crannies. And I don’t read a lot of blogs but the one that comes in the most with quality and quantity is old Richard Rohr’s (Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation). I am sure I have mentioned this before but he has got a brain lock on me at the moment so you will have to put up with it.

This is relevant to what we do here because he is currently writing about “liminal” space and this lines up one of our favorite topics here of, “What the heck did happen to me/us on the Camino anyway?” Or in other words, “How come I had such a hard time reentering my old life afterward?”. There are seriously a lot of blogposts on this back in this blog’s archives. And the ghosts of these questions linger on. This was powerful stuff that we encountered and we can’t really ignore it or we can ignore it but at our own peril.

Liminal comes from the Latin “limen” which means threshold. So Father Richard uses liminal to describe the space that a person is in when they are on the threshold of something new and different. They are outside of their usual space, their usual routine, their usual way, there rut, their usual usual. We find ourselves there in this new place because of some shock that knocks us out of our old patterns. Could be death of a loved one, divorce or a bad diagnosis, for instance.

But without that, going on pilgrimage is in itself the act of getting out of one’s patterns. It is letting oneself be the stranger, to be outside one’s normal. This in itself is putting one in liminal space. And so many pilgrims are of the age where they have been touched by tragedies that may be unresolved. This combination can be a starting place for real growth that comes out of being brave and crossing that threshold into liminal space.

We remember vividly the space we were in after our Caminos where we felt like we had been run over by a truck, which is how I can remember describing it. It is that space that Father Richard talks about, that space that is so pregnant with potential. That may be the space that great people are in for the most part or perhaps continually.

OK, well, there you have it for today. The sun is out and my archers are avidly awaiting. Thanks for being here, love you spaciously, Felipe.