It’s been a news-filled season. Every morning, we seem to wake up to more disruption. As one friend (who loves fancy words, but then so do I) put it: we live in liminal times.
Liminal. It’s a word we’ve heard a lot in recent years—but what does it really mean?
Liminal comes from the Latin limen, meaning “threshold.” It refers to a transitional space or time—a place of in-between—where we are no longer in the old, but not yet in the new. In spiritual or psychological terms, liminality is a state of uncertainty, disorientation, and potential transformation. It’s often uncomfortable. The old structures no longer hold, and the new has not yet emerged. But it’s also sacred—because it’s precisely in this threshold space that deep growth and change become possible.
I appreciate how Ruth Haley Barton describes it:
Liminal space, the place of waiting, is a unique spiritual position where human beings hate to be… It is where you have left the tried and true, but have not yet been able to replace it with anything else. It is when you are finally out of the way. It is when you are between your old comfort zone and any possible new answer. If you are not trained in how to hold anxiety, how to live with ambiguity, how to entrust and wait, you will run… anything to flee this terrible cloud of unknowing.
But even if we wanted to run—where would we go?
The challenges we face are real and pressing. Our systems—governance, economy, even daily life—are strained, unsustainable, and often no longer life-giving. Our social, environmental, and spiritual crises demand thoughtful response. And yet, there are no quick fixes.
Family Systems Theory identifies five common responses to anxiety—what I call the “F words” of Family Systems: Freeze. Flight. Fuse. Frenzy. (And a fifth “F” I won’t mention here—but you can ask me about it the next time we talk!)
Take a moment. Which one describes your typical response to stress? Do you shut down? Run? Merge with others emotionally? Stay frantically busy to feel in control?
The truth is: none of these anxious patterns lead to transformation, and we all have them. My particular favorite is to frenzy. What we need now is the courage to remain in the liminal space—to dwell in the tension of what was and what is yet to come.
This is where paradox comes in.
The word paradox comes from the Greek paradoxos—para, meaning “beyond,” and doxa, meaning “belief.” Paradox points to truths that live both within and beyond our first impressions.
To cultivate paradoxical curiosity is to resist either/or thinking. It’s a posture of humility and wonder—a way of honoring complexity, holding tension, and listening deeply for what might yet emerge. There is wisdom in paradox. It can widen our imagination. It can shift our perceptions. It can help us glimpse clarity—even in the midst of chaos.
So, as we lean into the rhythms of summer, let’s do so with a posture of paradoxical curiosity. Let’s stay present to this liminal season—not as something to escape, but as a sacred threshold where new life may yet take root.
Together we thrive,
