PEBBLE
Don’t walk ten miles into a forest and expect to come out in five.
-credited to Kristen Bell’s therapist, shared by Cheryl in Kasota, MN
BOULDER
Being in a state of unknowing is not the same as losing our way… A place of unknowing can include waiting for clarity or the next thing to be revealed. We may or may not already have a sense of direction of where we’re heading, but we can still have a sense of trust and peace, nonetheless.
~Jo-Ellen Anne Darling
written and shared by Jo-Ellen in Allentown PA in Journaling as a Spiritual Path
PONDER
Several years ago, I was working with an organization navigating a transition that was both positive and difficult. Some leaders were frustrated with team members who still seemed resistant to the changes after two years. After hearing several examples, I wondered whether it might be more accurate, and more useful, to imagine those employees occupying a liminal space: the threshold between how things used to be and how they might eventually become.
I whipped up a few slides about liminal spaces and explored the concept at their annual meeting. It seemed to help both the folks who were struggling to adapt and those who had grown impatient with them.
In a cool coincidence, a few weeks later I landed on a college campus to fire up their student affairs staff and discovered they were navigating massive changes, too: their first significant leadership transition in almost a quarter century, along with a major construction project that promised long-term improvements while wreaking havoc on programs and work life for several years. Naming the literal and metaphorical liminal spaces they were occupying helped them recognize the grief and heartache that can accompany growth.
I’ll never forget how preparing for those two talks deepened my understanding of liminal spaces and how we move through them. The timing was serendipitous: I delivered the presentations in January and February of 2020, just weeks before the COVID pandemic significantly changed how all of us worked and lived.
I’m sharing today’s quotes because so many of us are navigating considerable individual and collective changes these days. I loved Cheryl’s comment when she submitted today’s Pebble: “To me, it says patience is needed to restore, rebuild, and repair. Restoring health, rebuilding a reputation, repairing relationships: none of these are quick fixes. This is also true of weight loss, GPAs, credit scores, and fitness.”
Amen to that, Cheryl. Some journeys take longer than we hoped, and the middle can feel confusing, exhausting, and awfully inconvenient. Still, being somewhere between the old and the new doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve lost our way. We may simply be traveling the full distance required to arrive somewhere different.
Peace,
Paul