"In anthropology, liminality (from the Latin word limen, meaning "a threshold") 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" between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way, which the ritual establishes.
...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. The dissolution of order during liminality creates a fluid, malleable situation that enables new institutions and customs to become established." (excerpt from Wikipedia entry for liminality)
Rites of passage intrigue me in part because of the tension that lives within the cultural codification of an often unruly and entirely organic event, moving from one state of being to another. I'm drawn to ways in which people mark these transitions, how physical evidence and ritual indicators are used to verify that these wildnesses are in fact following a trajectory that is familiar. Can we find these things, or create them for ourselves without getting bogged down by obligations to outdated systems that might not serve our needs for seeking, guiding and marking transformation? And how is this the same as or different from ways that we humans also allow for just being -- as Karen Vargas said today -- old like water, knowing how to flow.
paddle board sunset on Swan Lake, MT, 2016