I love the beach. It doesn’t matter to me if it’s rocky as you’ll find it in Maine or sandy as it is in Hawaii; it’s all good. I love seeing the transition in the terrain as you approach the water’s edge. I love the dilapidated fences that are used to control and shape the dunes. I love the sea oats and other flora, such as railroad vine or marsh elder, that appear here and there. And the beach itself is never the same twice. Waves litter the sand with broken shells, seaweed, pieces of coral, and other curiosities. You’ll never know what to expect. Hermit crabs today? Driftwood tomorrow? The beach is a liminal experience between land and water. And you can often tell how far the waves encroach at high tide by the topography and watermarks on the back beach.
Liminal spaces
How many readers are aware of what are called “liminal spaces”? The term may be unfamiliar to us, but we certainly know what they are. In the simplest terms, they are transitions from one state to another (e.g., childhood or summer to adulthood or winter). In terms of human growth and development, the transition between childhood and adulthood is adolescence. When discussing seasons such as summer and winter, the liminal transition is autumn. Liminal spaces and the experiences they provide allow for the development of curiosity and the ability to reach beyond what we can easily grasp. They require us to leave the relative safety of our security zone to embark on some adventure, like the Pevensie children in Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Twilight
A common liminal effect we experience each day is twilight. It is the transition from day to night. It is a special time of each day, and people enjoy it for what it is—sitting on their porches on summer evenings, watching fireflies, and listening to the crickets and bullfrogs. It is a time of reflection. The relative quietness of this daily transition creates a surreal sense of awareness in people. They carry the memories of these liminal occasions well into their later years and often reflect on brilliant sunsets and an enlarged orange moon emerging from the horizon.
From the word “liminal” comes “limen,” which in the ancient world identified ports and safe havens for ships. Here, they could have protected access to both land and sea. In this usage, it suggests a “threshold.” It could also refer to a boundary. For example, Charon ferried souls across the liminal River Styx, which was the primary boundary between the living and the dead. Hades itself was clearly delineated by the Styx on one side and the rivers Acheron, Cocytus, and Phlegethon on the other sides.
Liminal boundaries
Yet, liminal boundaries are not always sharply defined. The threshold may be insidious or deceptive, not clearly marked. Your horizon may appear like a fog bank that disorients you. As a life hack that helps disoriented people, I’ve read that skiers who are buried in an avalanche become very disoriented because they cannot tell which way is up. Thus, they may dig deeper into the snow rather than out of it. Some carry a small object with them, like a coin. While buried in the snow, they search for the coin and then hollow out a small fist-sized hole in the snow. Once they find it, they let the coin drop. That way, they can tell in which direction to dig in order to free themselves. Having never been in an avalanche to put this to the test, I have no firsthand knowledge of whether this is even possible, let alone practical. I just mentioned it for what it’s worth.
Fog
In a literal sense, fog in nature occurs at rigid boundaries, such as where cold air and warm air meet. You commonly find fog near the coast, where ocean and land join together (though even small lakes or rivers generate fog as well). Navigating at night is treacherous enough, but it is easier than walking or driving through fog because you may at least receive occasional feedback even on a dark night. But you get a false sense of feedback with fog because it is deceptive and moves, so you cannot trust your instincts. Fog is fickle. Hypothetically: two ships on the sea are approaching land.
The same fog bank engulfs both ships. With one ship, the fog swirls around but allows brief glimpses of the path ahead, and the ship docks safely. The other ship in the same fog bank wrecks on the rocks.
Incidentally, fog in the context of liminal spaces need not be literal; it can also be metaphorical. For example, after two years of chemotherapy, people around me wonder why I sometimes experience “chemo fog.” This is characterized by occasional disorientation, trouble concentrating, and so on. To me, it might be as simple as old age. But I know there are millennial veterans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan who have PTSD, and that provides the same terror and disorientation that fog does. When we are in a place where we cannot trust our senses or instruments, and our wits fail us, it is easy to “lose the plot.”
Outcomes
This also leads to the point about outcomes. I hope the narrative I’ve painted so far does not suggest that there is a happy outcome in every case when someone goes through a life transition (i.e., passes through a liminal space). For a childless couple who want to raise a family, the liminality of a pregnancy promises a dream come true, but a miscarriage is always a possibility. Some patients with Pulseless Electrical Activity (PEA) who have been diagnosed and resuscitated within seconds can continue their lives unaffected and live to old age, but most do not survive. At least, this was the outcome in my late wife’s encounter with pulselessness. For a person who has been unemployed for months, even after sending out a hundred resumes, an invitation to actually be interviewed by an employer is a liminal moment between unemployment and having a job, but that interview may not go well and the status quo ante continues.
Two examples of liminal spaces
Example #1:
At the end of World War II, Germany and its capital city, Berlin, were divided into four zones, each managed either by Russia, the U.K., France, or the U.S. However, effectively, there were only two zones: the free zones run by the Western countries and the oppressive zone run by Russia. The difference between the two was that Germans in the Western zones could speak their minds, travel abroad, and enjoy the freedoms that Americans and Europeans experience (e.g., freedom of speech, religion, etc.), while East Germans could not. So the East Germans fled to the West.
A wall, ninety-seven miles long, was constructed by the communists, along with armed guard towers and checkpoints for authorized travel. Germans in the West might have wanted to visit their relatives in the East, but they did not wish to live there. East Germans attempted to escape (hence the wall) and were often shot in the process. Between 140 and 600 East Germans were killed, especially if one includes sea crossings.
Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin was a liminal space, with the West having their guard post as did the Russians. One was either crossing from an open society into a desolate and dangerous one, or the other way around. There was only a short distance between the guard posts (typically 65 to 100 feet) in which to change one’s mind. Once you crossed into the Russian zone, you might never be seen again.
Example #2:
In the second photo, a patient is being rushed to the Emergency Department with a condition known as pulseless electrical activity (PEA). The patient is unconscious and does not have a pulse. Therefore, the person is not fully alive—due to the absence of a palpable pulse and effective circulation—but is also not completely dead, as there is measurable electrical activity on the heart monitor. This is a liminal state, although a doctor would not likely use that term. Depending on how many minutes the patient has been in this condition, there may be no brain activity, and the patient is, for all intents and purposes, dead. Yet their heart is still beating faintly. If the patient’s heart were restored to normal function, the brain would likely remain in a state of deterioration because the cells in the brain cannot repair themselves, and the patient might very well be declared dead while still having a heart beat.
More
Examples of liminal spaces would be the distance (3,900 miles) Columbus traveled across the ocean from Palos de la Frontera in Southwest Spain to San Salvador in the Bahamas. This was a transition from the Old World to the New World. A newborn baby crosses through a liminal space of only five inches as it passes from the womb through the vaginal canal at birth. The transition is from a dependent fetus to a viable infant.
It is also possible (though unusual) to apply the notion of liminality to time rather than distance. Think of a total eclipse of the sun: at one point, the far edge of the sun is pierced by a tiny shadow which, over time, covers the entire face of the sun. This marks the transition from a normal state to a point where the sun disappears in the sky.
I have some acquaintances at the moment whom I knew while they were in good health who are now dying of cancer. Their transition is a painful one. Yet, is pain always bad? The military once had an ad in magazines that read, “Pain is weakness leaving the body.” It is difficult to argue that exercise and toning your muscles are bad. In fact, in almost every case, they are good. Yet, the cost of this improvement can be measured in pain as muscles stretch and tissue breaks down, releasing chemicals into the body before the muscles bounce back in better shape than before.
Not every liminal transition is the same. Columbus was absolutely certain that the world was round and that eventually he would return to Spain by sailing away from it. True, he did not know when he would find land, and without knowing the circumference of the planet, he could not be sure he had enough provisions for the trip, but he had no doubt there would be a happy ending.
Consider that five or seven centuries before Columbus, there were seamen who believed with equal assurance that the world was flat, meaning they would fall off into oblivion if they traveled too far. There were also monsters and dragons that they feared; even Columbus could not discount the possibility of monsters in his day. So, there is an uncertainty— even a disorientation mixed with fear—once a point is reached.
Elsewhere on this blog, I write of vision quests that involve liminal growth in terms of rites of passage or personal or spiritual maturation.
Liminal experiences are not to be feared. They should be cautiously explored, even as toddlers explore the nooks and crannies of their home. Yes, dangers are present. A small child may swallow something that poses a choking hazard, or fall down the basement steps, so we want to prepare for whatever contingencies may occur. But exploring beyond our boundaries is part of normal growth and development and it should be embraced.
#Liminal spaces
