DEVOTIONAL JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024

Living in Liminal Space

In my September 2023 Devotional, I wrote the following in reference to my finishing a role after 9 years and some calling it retirement.

“I have entered a room, which I have never been in before. Oh, I have seen the door in the distance and had a perspective of what the room held and was like. Yet, four weeks ago, I opened the door and walked in. I am finding some surprises. I have looked back through the door at what I left behind and sighed.”

An author, Alice Fryling, in Aging Faithfully, the Holy Invitation of Growing Older, writes about Liminal Space. When reading it, I immediately connected with what I had written above. I quote her on the definition.

“It is the unknown place between where we are and where we will be. It is a place that is mysterious, vague, exciting, and scary all wrapped up into something new and uninformed. It is moving to where we have never been before.”

Each year, Denise and I choose a word that we want to focus on over the following twelve months.  For me in 2024, it is two words. Different and Unlearned.

They are related and I do want this next year to be different and to do so, I need to “unlearn.”

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi writes

“If we viewed elderhood as the crowning achievement of our lives, we would open the door with reverence and anticipation.”

If I am to give proper sunshine and nourishment to ensure that it grows to health and vigour, as Rabbi Zalman writes, then I need to unlearn. I have had perspectives that may have been good previously, however, in this new liminal space, they are not life-giving, and I need to unlearn.

Over the next few devotionals, I will be sharing from my journey in this room. I will expand upon what I am “unlearning” in this new vantage point.

Here are five:

• How will I now define what productivity means?

• How will I nourish, value, invest in Community? For as one ages, Community becomes crucial?

• How will I accept being in this liminal space and not always looking back through the door, I just entered. I love how Alice Fryling writes this.
  
  ”What if God’s interest in what I do grows out of a fundamental interest in God knowing who I am and who He has made me to be.”

       

• How will I practically live into Rabbi Zalman’s words that this time really is the crowning achievement? I so often hear “They say these are the golden years; not very golden for me!”

• How will I approach the experiences, I may not like, in this liminal space and listen for the soft, quiet, gentle words of the Holy Spirit? As he whispers, “Do not worry. It is OK and I love you, even when you are not able to do all you used to do, and I will keep reminding you of my love.”

So…. is this possible, what I am writing about?

On my own, no. However, through the power of the Holy Spirit, yes, as I grasp onto the words of Deuteronomy 30: 11.

“What I am asking of you is not too difficult for you and it is not beyond your reach.”

Why don’t you also choose the word “Unlearn” for 2024 and share with me, what you are unlearning!

~ Bruce

Photo by YUHUI DU