From liminal disruption to integration of the new

Michelle Trebilock, Ph.D is an Anglican Priest and Chaplain at the Brotherhood of St. Laurence in Melbourne, Australia. The following words come from her chapter, “Hope in the Dark Passage” in Neither Here nor There: The Many Voices of Liminality.

The liminality of the ritual space is encountered through some kind of disruption to public life — a breach — an interruption of what had previously been experienced as normative. Next, there is a threshold, a limen, an invitation to move through the immediacy of the crisis to something else, the moment in which the person considers his or her committed response to the new situation. After the threshold comes redressive action — an authorized agent organizes what needs to be done and begins the process of reintegration, the reestablishment of order integrated with the fresh insights or necessary reformations gleaned from the disruption.