Liminality

Me in front of my own personal Mecca (not a very appropriate metaphor today.)
Shakespeare and Company in Paris

Oh, what the heck, let's go straight to Wikipedia for this. It's a good description:

In anthropology, liminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning "a threshold"^[1]) is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of rituals, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the ritual is complete. During a ritual's liminal stage, participants "stand at the threshold"^[2] between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way, which the ritual establishes....

More recently, usage of the term has broadened to describe political and cultural change as well as rituals.^[4] During liminal periods of all kinds, social hierarchies may be reversed or temporarily dissolved, continuity of tradition may become uncertain, and future outcomes once taken for granted may be thrown into doubt.^[5] The dissolution of order during liminality creates a fluid, malleable situation that enables new institutions and customs to become established.^[6]

Do you think we are in a liminal space in the world...generally? Do you think the Parisians feel as if in a liminal space tonight? 

In Depth Psychology, to be in a liminal space is almost as if being baptized. You will be different when it is complete. You are lost, disoriented, maybe terrified, in an unfamiliar place. It can happen during the most profound life passages - birth, death, a job loss, a divorce, a spiritual shift. It can happen when it makes no sense. It happens when "the gods" think you need it is the way I look at it. We are all likely to experience liminal space in our life - maybe many times over. I have. If you pay attention, it is a growth opportunity akin to winning the lottery. But you have to walk straight into the darkness and, then, beg for help.

I feel like we, humanity, need to do this tonight. Beg for help. From the gods, the angels, all higher beings who must be gazing down upon us and shaking their heads. 

Please, God, show us the way.