Post 1

This blog is entitled Liminal Space. It’s not the ideal title, but it captures what I’ll be trying to get at as I journal through my experience as a father.

The term liminal means threshold, and liminal space typically refers to those periods in our lives where we are passing from our old selves into our (hopefully) true selves. I first heard the term while reading various works of Richard Rohr- a Franciscan monk who appears to understand the male journey as well as anyone. His writings often center on what we do with our pain, and he has great insights into what it takes to turn life’s disappointments into growth edges. For Rohr, liminal spaces are those periods in our lives where we realize that our old ways just don’t work like they used to, and what we do with that realization will go a long ways to determining whether we become wise men or fools.

The blog will also be written from the perspective of someone who embraces the idea of stage 4 Christian faith. I find stage 4 faith difficult to define in a sentence, so I’ll try to give a sense of its overall attributes. Stage 4 faith is appealing to nearly everyone- versus the distinctly unappealing religiosity of rules-oriented faith. At the same time, stage 4 faith believes in all the same rules that were introduced by our father’s church, but they are embraced for a very different set of reasons. Stage 4 faith blends opposites- the concept of right-wing/left-wing, free market v. socialism, dictator v. democracy- stage 4 faith finds these categorizations insufficient. For example, the best forms of church governance give power to the congregation but also a healthy respect for a leader’s authority. The best men are often quite manly but also carry certain female attributes in spades. As Proverbs 31 teaches us, the best women have characteristics that we typically think of as masculine. The best life demands that we take responsibility for our choices as beings with free-will, but we must appreciate that our destiny is determined by factors and a God that knows way more than we do about everything. Stage 4 faith is egalitarian in principle and thus available to everyone, but few truly get there because it is costly and demands that you die in order to truly live.

With that as context, my journey of fatherhood begins. At 4:05 AM on January 31, 2011, S made his entrance into our world. They say nothing prepares you for the birth of your first child, and watching this little person decimate my wife’s body on his way out of the womb was both horrifying and beautiful. I think I had a glimpse of what God the Father felt like as He watched the brutality of His Son being crucified on the cross, but knowing that this was also the culmination of the greatest love story ever told. For me, it was the end of one journey, and the beginning of another.
I may not be terribly well prepared, but I am ready. So away we go…o away we g