READINGS
“Moments Between” by Susan McLauaghlin
Notice the moments between one thing and another,
the soft delicate shift between two things:
the space between awake and asleep, between a bud and a bloom,
when the sunrise becomes the day and when twilight, the night
the moment from unborn to first breath,
the fleeting second between last breath to death,
the inconspicuous moments: when pain becomes memory, child becomes adult, the face in the mirror is no longer a reflection of youth,
simple moments: the last piece in a puzzle, the last sentence in a book,
lasting moments: when a friend’s touch heals and simple words soothe,
when sorrow becomes joy, and when alone becomes connected.

“Summer” – by Marv Hiles, An Almanac for the Soul
Summer comes to us like a determined friend who sent us postcards in the winter. Summer develops in days, and right now our bodies and souls are making adjustments as our place under the sun shifts. We stand between the times, and there is always much to learn on the boundary, on the threshold. The earth turns on its axis, and time, like a current of air, moves past, leaving us alone on the tip of the moment with our thoughts. In the roundel of seasons, there is never more than a pause. The rising and falling light never stops, and we are about to be carried by summer winds across the skies.

SERMON – Susan McLaughlin’s words, “Notice the moments between one thing and another,” are a wonderful description of liminal time. Liminal time is a spiritual, psychological metaphor for moments that are thresholds, doorways, portals. This part of summer, between the end of June and the beginning of the new school year in mid-August, is always a liminal time for me, a time when I notice that I am at the portal between two seasons of my life.

Perhaps that sense of a threshold is more intense for me because my birthday is in July, and so the time in summer between the six months past and the rest of the year ahead is always laden with a change in my age as well. It is also the moment when I recognize how quickly summer goes by. We have six weeks now to grab hold of this summer before the season shifts. So, our worship theme, At the Portal, is an invitation for me to stand still in the portal, paying attention to this in-between time, looking back, looking forward, mostly looking at where I am now.

I love that the word liminal comes from the Latin word Limen, which is the name for the transverse beam in a door frame. If you look at the cover of your worship bulletin, you will see in that image that the transverse beam is not part of the door. Instead it is the upper beam of the frame that holds up and supports the wall and ultimately the ceiling, providing and protecting the open space in the doorway. When you leave the Sanctuary this morning, pause for a moment to look at where the transverse beam is lodged over the doorways that you pass through.

I am going to digress a bit now, but you will see how my story comes back to the transverse beam. When Larry and I first moved to Gainesville, we lived in a Suburban Heights house that was owned by this church. It is not unusual for a church to buy a home for the minister and the minister’s family. That saves the church money in the long run, because the church can pay the minister less since the church provides housing. And, since most ministers often move to serve another church, this arrangement saves the minister the hassle of selling and then buying a house every three to eight years.
Our denomination – the United Church of Christ – uses the word parsonage to describe this church-owned house, although most UCC pastors are not called parsons. Presbyterians use the word manse, so I thought perhaps those church-owned houses might be a little more like mansions. Episcopalians call theirs a Vicarage. Catholics call it the rectory. My personal favorite is the Baptists, who call their church-owned minister’s home a Pastorium, which always makes me think of an aquarium in which a minister lives.

Whatever you call it, it is always in some way a bit like living in a fishbowl. Even with the best of intentions on everyone’s part, a parsonage always felt to me like I was living in someone else’s house. I needed permission to make changes in that house. And we had no housing security or equity and eventually no place to live in retirement. You need to know that, four years after we moved to Gainesville, UCG sold the parsonage to us, which was a win/win both for us and for the church.
That parsonage had a one car garage that adjoined a small study, a study with one door opening to the outside driveway, one door opening into the garage, and no access to the inside of the house. It was built as the minister’s office, so that people could come to see the minister without disturbing the rest of the family. We moved here with a three-month-old and a three-year-old, and we immediately knew that in our case, it was the family who would be disturbing the minister.

So Larry requested office space at the Presbyterian-Disciples of Christ student center on University Avenue, which is where UCG was worshiping on Sundays, since we had no building of our own. That student center was eventually sold to a commercial vendor and over the years housed Burrito Brothers, a pizza place, and right now a restaurant called Just Salad, whose sign is right below where Larry’s office used to be.

After we bought the parsonage from the church, we were able to address the issue of this inaccessible study. My parents, who lived in Maryland, visited us regularly and were good sports about sleeping on the sofa bed in the living room and walking back and forth through the garage to the study to get to their suitcases. My dad, whose calling in life was to find better ways to arrange anything, suggested cutting a hole through the living room wall to create an interior doorway from our living room into the study. He arrived on his next visit with his work clothes and his plan. Cutting that hole in our living room wall, which turned out to be a thick concrete block wall, was a huge amount of work requiring many a trip to Ace Hardware to buy a skill saw, masonry saw blades and drill bits, hammers and chisels, and huge sheets of plastic to hang around the emerging hole in the wall to keep dust out of the rest of the house.
Larry and my dad put up a temporary transverse beam, propped up by 2 by 4s, so that what remained of the concrete block wall didn’t come tumbling down. When the project was finished and the permanent transverse beam and doorway were in place, it was amazing. That room which had been inaccessible now became a wonderful part of our everyday life. It became my study with my desk; it was where overnight guests could comfortably keep their belongings; and at one point in time, it was a bedroom for our returned-home-for-a-just-a-little while young adult son.

This story is a wonderful metaphor for my life and for my spiritual journey. The limen, that transverse beam above the doorway, is the strongest part of any building. It enables me to move from one room to another. And it is the safest place to stand under during an earthquake.

I invite you to think of that limen – that transverse beam – as an image of holding up the open space at the portal of those liminal moments in our lives when we move between days and seasons, between chapters and commitments and challenges in our lives. It is important for me to stand in that strongest part of my internal and spiritual space when I am stepping between those changing transitional times.
Instead of rushing ahead, I try to remember to stop, even briefly, in that liminal space – to stop and take a deep breath and bring my attention to that present moment – which is the moment in between. That practice is the spiritual transverse beam that holds everything together at the portals of my life, steadying me and giving me time and grounding in the midst of transition and change.
One of the mottos of the United Church of Christ is “Never place a period where God has put a comma.” Margaret Borrelli writes: “The comma is where one takes a breath, breathes in for a moment in time, waiting, expectant, listening. A comma creates a space so small that it can’t be measured, so large that it can contain God. This God of commas who always speaks, whispers in my ear: breathe, breathe, breathe.”

William Bridges, the author of a wonderful book titled Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes, calls these moments “the neutral zone.” He says liminal moments in the neutral zone help us avoid the trap of too quickly going fast forward or of staying stuck in reverse. “It is in the neutral zone,” he writes,”that the real work of transformation takes place, a time when an inner reorientation occurs as we almost imperceptibly make a shift from one season of life to another.”

The spiritual path is both an inward and outward journey. Summer is a season that beckons us with moments to strengthen our inner resources for the challenges and issues that lie ahead. If we pay attention, these summer days can offer a pause between what was in May and what will be in mid-August when we return to the regular routines of life and work and school, to our commitments and callings here in Gainesville as well as in the state and national and world arenas, and to the transitions ahead of us as a church this year. The trick is paying attention now, recognizing and taking advantage of those liminal moments when they come.

They may be small and ordinary, like watching the sunset as the earth turns from day to night, like the last sentence of a book that calls us to ponder what we just read rather than quickly plunging into the next book, or like pausing in our doorway as we walk in or out before we rush on to the next thing, or like a time of prayer or meditation.

Sometimes the liminal space may be less ordinary, like experiencing restful days of vacation or a remarkable opportunity of travel and adventure, like paying attention to an extraordinary dream or a poignant conversation, like a pause before a looming change or decision.

If you are new to UCG, a summer tradition here is to gather, as an individual or a family, a small amount of water to bring to our Gathering of Waters Service in August. All of our individual waters are poured together at that service to create our Sacred Water, which we use throughout the year for Baptisms and healing and blessings. I gather my water at a liminal moment: it might simply be the rain water on a steamy afternoon, or it might be from the ocean or a lake or a pool; it might be from a moment of sheer joy or of overwhelming tears – whenever and wherever I find that water, it is a moment, a comma, somewhere between what has just past and what is still yet to be.

That transverse beam not only supports the wall and the ceiling to allow an opening in the space below. It also allows the door to swing open. After the pause, the comma, the liminal moment, we are called to step through the portal, with faith and with hope, to the next moment, to the next chapter, to the next room in the house of our life and our soul that awaits us on our journey. And we are reminded as we take that step through the doorway, in the Biblical words of the letter to the Hebrews, Chapter 11, that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

BENEDICTION –
May you find your breath, filled with the Spirit,
As you stand at the portal, that moment between moments.
May you then step through the doorway into your future,
With vision and with hope. Blessed be.

“Liminal Time”
Sandy Reimer
June 30, 2019