The Liminal

Where Most of Life Happens

I have come to love liminal spaces - the sacred spaces in between that hold the gems of mystery and life. Living in the in-between is where most of life occurs, where the mundane becomes holy.

Our lives contain moments that feel "big" - milestones of accomplishment, achievements worth celebrating. But these pale beside the million little moments that occur between them. Those fleeting, temporal heartbeats walk in cadence with time toward our eventual death and transition into whatever lies beyond.

As we cross the collective threshold in the Northern Hemisphere into summer, I'm struck by the in-between state of seasons we literally walk through. Even though these last two months have been spring in North Carolina - a glorious one I may add - there's an awareness of its temporal nature. Spring is never fixed, never arriving with a definitive "ah, here it is!"

There are moments, certainly. The first evening you linger in your yard, savoring perfect cool temperatures. Placing fresh-picked daffodils on your kitchen windowsill. The hummingbird's return to the feeder after winter migration. But these are punctuation marks in a longer sentence.

Between these moments, nature performs its mundane, inevitable walk toward the next season. The wild tends to the slow work of becoming.

Now, as summer arrives, the in-between is palpable. Spring blooms fade while heat shifts our routines. Animals search for water and food. Lightning bugs punctuate the dusk-to-dark sky as crickets provide white noise and frogs throw their small lakeside parties. The light becomes intense, bright, penetrating, hot - sometimes unbearably so.

Through it all, the in-between continues. We water more, mow less, wrestle with mosquitoes, eat dinners outside, stay up later, and welcome the clockwork evening thunderstorms. With the summer solstice just two days away, we'll soon begin the slow journey away from the sun toward fall. Small signs will emerge for those paying attention - longer shadows cascading across the ground, darkness arriving earlier and earlier slowly each evening.

Life mirrors this rhythm. A constant tending to the in-between. This is the liminal space I hope we can hold more reverently, for this is where we actually live. "Life is what happens while you're making other plans," as someone once said.

My daily walks and writings are my attempt to tether myself to the extraordinary ordinary. Some days I capture it; others, well, not so much. Today I will notice all the in-between happenings around me, and tonight give thanks for what they mean.

The liminal asks us to find the sacred in the space between arrivals, to discover that most of life's richness lives not in the destinations but in the walking itself.

xx, Victoria