Liminal spaces and Regeneration
RēSchool retreat/Circular Time
This past weekend, Rē had a really special gathering that included several members of the board and other core team members. We were subsequently joined by many people, mostly from the Growing Roots community, for a community retreat that focused around circular time. It included a powerful circular time ritual. We were at the Rivendale retreat center (pictured above) in Sewannee in the Appalachian mountains during some particularly cold days.
Circular time rituals can open people up to liminal spaces. As with most liminal spaces, it is hard to describe. That experience has led us to reflect some on liminal spaces, and how they relate to climate change.
The word "liminal" comes from the Latin word limen, which means threshold. It is a place between - between the past and the future, between beginnings and endings, between this world and another world. It is a betwixt and between time. Rituals often engage in liminal spaces. Liminal spaces are an important part of many religious traditions. Religions often create rituals and traditions (such as weddings, advent, baptisms) to support people in moving from one space to another.
While it is not always talked about, we can also see our current, early-stage dimension of climate change as part of a liminal space. For people interested in attending to ecological transitions and creating more regenerative cultures, understanding something about liminal spaces can thus be supportive. For those who are keen on both inner work and enabling collective spiritual work, understanding liminal spaces better as it relate to climate change can be immensely generative.
Here's a simple - even a tad bit simplistic - explanation of that connection.
Humans tend to experience the natural world as relatively predictable and relatively consistent. Thus, summer becomes fall becomes winter becomes spring. Or, in other parts of the world, monsoon seasons and dry seasons are both highly predictable. This enables people to grow crops, follow livestock herds (which move with the seasons in a relatively predictable way), and plan their lives accordingly.
Climate change changes that. It changes the experience of nature. Of place. Of time itself.
We are in the early stages of climate change, so we are in a "time between times". The "new" weather patterns have not solidified. For example, it is clear that there are, now, many more storms than there used to be. But the exact pattern of storms (besides the general, "more intense "more frequent") is itself still changing. We are, thus, "betwixt and between".
Some religious/anthropological scholars argue that the whole world has entered a liminal space, wherein the future is immensely uncertain (in ways that are unlike other versions of future uncertainty.) There's some substantial comparative challenges to this perspective, but it is an interesting one to play with. It is part of why some people see in climate change the potential for a collective shift in consciousness: surely, a shared concern about the changing environment would lead to people coming together around our common home and going through a transformational process now that we are in this collective liminal space. (As I'm sure you've noticed, this has not yet happened.)
What, then, occurs if that liminal space does not change? In some ways, that defies the definition of liminality, which is supposed to be a relatively brief state. But in the case of climate change, it is unclear how long it will take for a "new normal" in the weather/sea-rise patterns to become normal. We do know that high anxiety/climate anxiety/"solastalgia" can emerge in a state of ongoing change where the core issues are not addressed. That is already happening. It is unclear how long the long journey to a "new normal" will be - definitely over multiple human lifetimes, because of how long it takes the carbon in the atmosphere to influence the weather patterns. And, of course, it also is impacted by whether current political and business leadership can curtail carbon emissions. New "normals", at least in terms of weather patterns, might not happen in the lifetime of most people who are alive today. this means we will be in liminal spaces for quite some time.
Art and ritual are technologies that can assist us in the interpretation of the experience of the fluctuation of multiple alternative worlds, both anticipated and spontaneous.
Can they be used to help us engage with climate change?
Yes. Of course they can. And many rituals and artistic practices are arising in many different sectors to support this. Really, the plethora out there is quite amazing.
Both research and experience point to the importance of people coming together around climate anxiety - both to be with one another and to find pathways for concrete action. Art and ritual are important parts of this process of regenerative coming together.
As that happens, there is something that needs to be attended to, and that is how we think about the "use" of rituals to support people in engaging with a particular focus, such as climate change.
When you go into the liminal ritual spaces, you are not in complete control. You can influence and shape, but there are bigger forces at work. You don't know exactly what is going to show up. So what shows up might not look like it has anything to do with "climate change" per se. Someone might find themselves mourning around the loss of a parent, or experience their anger around their inability to get adequate health insurance. On the surface, this is not related to climate change. But that doesn't mean that in the bigger interconnected nature of reality, it's not connected. I think some of this is because human consciousness is actually rather fluid. We certainly see this in grief work: when experiencing one grief (the loss of a beloved pet), another grief (the increasing number of wildfires) can easily arise. The very fluidity is part of what is so powerful. For those of you who find academic articles interesting, here's one on these themes from the Sustainability journal on "Climate Change as Liminal Experience".
Certainly, whether you are consciously working with a liminal space or supporting people in processing, keep finding ways to come together!
And if you've been developing rituals that are supportive to you in engaging with climate change, do let us know!
- Sara Jolena
Upcoming Events
Circular Time
Time is not linear. Time curves.
So why are you still using a linear calendar and pretending that you can chart your life in a straight line?