Welcome to my new blog-The Liminal Spaces. This unique blog is a place for writers, readers, and spiritual seekers.
In March, I wrote a blog titled "The Liminal Space." It was an extended version of a sermon I had given a few months prior. There was something more to say, so I revised, edited, and published it on my previous blog- "The Mustard Seed." My father called me after he read it and told me it was my best writing yet. I started to cry.
My father was a man of few words, so when he did speak, you knew that what he said came straight from his heart. He told me my "vocabulary had grown" and that he had to look up what liminal space meant. I laughed and said, "Me too." I had first heard the phrase in Katherine May's book "Wintering." It is a gorgeous phrase. And at mid-life it seems fitting.
Over the summer, I attended a writer's retreat and came home infused with excitement and energy to write more, and I told him I was on my way to a book. He told me he couldn't wait to read it. My father passed away in August.
The only thing that can be harder than grief is regret. It may be regret that makes grief more challenging to navigate. I don't know how helpful regret is unless you use that feeling to propel you forward. To force you to live more fully. Love more openly. Give more freely. And put yourself out into the world. Then, regret is a valuable tool.
Grief, however, is a process that doesn't have an ending. It is ongoing, like waves in the ocean. Sometimes, the swell is significant, and just looking at it makes you feel like you are about to be swallowed, and other times, the waters are calm and inner peace fills you. When I was little, and I would sit on my father's lap on the beach, my father would look out into Long Island Sound and say, "Look at that, Karen, it is so clear today you can see the houses on Fisher's Island." I loved those days. My friend Chick told me this summer that pilots and traffic controllers use the term "severe clear" to describe such a day. A day without clouds, just a clear view of the sky, endless and beautiful.
I love a "severe clear" day that feels beautiful and endless. Life gives you some clouds, though, doesn't it?
Life can throw you into a thunderstorm or a blizzard. A call from the doctor, a sick child, or losing someone you love can all block us from seeing beyond that into what can and will be good again. We can confuse those stormy days as bad, but they are just days—maybe a more challenging day than yesterday and perhaps a better day than tomorrow. Life is full of stormy and severe clear days; we must learn how to navigate them.
I navigate best through writing. It settles my brain, which never seems to stop. Some days, my brain feels like an agitator in a washing machine- moving in this chunky, slightly disjointed way. The machine we had when I was a kid was noisy. It clunked when the agitator went one way, then clunked when it changed direction: Clunk. Clunk.
The last piece I wrote that my father read has become a new space for seeking the things that make us whole. I hope this becomes a place for readers, writers, spiritual seekers, or just human beings, in the midst of mid-life or perhaps not even close to it, find inspiration and joy.
Welcome to The Liminal Space.
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