COMFORTING MEMORIES...LIMINAL SPACE

In my reading Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation" this morning, I was awakened to liminal space...which I've heard of in passing but never before connected with.

I was reading Paula D'Arcy's story which flashed me back to 1948, back to when my brother Paul first exhibited signs that he was losing his mental faculties (undiagnosed tumor of the brain), and how scared I felt. I avoided him even as he was alone in his bed...and no one but me there in that moment to comfort him. And I did not. 

Just one year before, my hero, my Uncle Charlie, had died in a fiery auto accident...he was my first true love. I knew he loved me better than any of his other nieces or nephews, plus he looked like Clark Gable. In 1947 that was the capper on love interests for me and a whole lot of other females.

The blessing for me occurred when I was maybe 16 or 17...before college, still living at home, and with no religious convictions at all. I was in my bedroom trying to decide what to wear on a date that night, and, from no known where, the thought flashed that my brother's death was the saving grace in our family's consciousness.

I fully recognized for the first time that Paul had been the singular center of our lives, meaning, he was my father's favorite, he was my mother's favorite, he was my sister's favorite and he was my favorite...and we simply tolerated each other.

In a flash, I "saw" Paul being lifted up with ribbon-like ropes attached to him and to each of us that pulled each of us together. I knew that Mom and Dad had a much easier relationship now, and my sister and I had become best friends when before his death we'd ignored each other. Further, that Uncle Charlie's death, in our familial setting, paved the way for this to happen.

In D'Arcy's story, she revealed how liminal moments can occur at any time: Then some indescribable light fights its way through the impenetrable dark—an unpredictable, unimportant, runaway moment that lights up everything you’ve been unable to see until then. That light removes all the shoulds and oughts, all the illusions about fairness. You enter liminal space....

That liminal space, a fleeting thought lasting no longer than the beat of my heart, exchanged my lingering guilt and despair for gratitude and grace.

Thank you.