When Jesus Moves In

Liminality.

I love to teach vocabulary.  Besides getting a chance to teach kids how to appreciate the words and the author's choice of visuals and figurative language, I have always been one to seek out terms and words.  I remember in college reading Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full--confession, I never actually finished it--and would stop every so often to highlight words, look them up in the dictionary and tried, unsuccessfully at times, to incorporate these new phrases into my poetry.  I know there's a journal in the crawl space collecting dust with my creativity by means of a dictionary failures.

Being a Bible reader now, I've realized words can have emphasis and new meanings.  Take the word zealot. Nowadays, if you're labeled a zealot, you're either a terrorist, someone in the Westboro Baptist Church holding signs at funerals or some crazy man straight from an 80's movie, ringing a bell and wearing one of those cardboard signs--the end is nigh!  But in the time of Jesus's time, being a zealot for the Lord was what the disciples were.  Damn right I want to be a zealot!

So when our youth pastor gave us a new word to digest, I quickly fell in love with it.

Liminality is the condition of being on a threshold at the beginning of a process or a rite of passage.  In essence, the state of liminality is that awkward moment when you are unaware of the social norms of the group or community.  It's a kids' first day in junior high, that first day on a new job, the day the new boss comes in and issues a staff meeting.  As the youth around the room gave examples of their experiences, I began to think that much of my whole life has been geared to hear this one word, to be in that exact place.

That Sunday, we were supposed to have been at my daughter's softball doubleheader. The games had been moved and rescheduled due to a spring/winter storm.  We didn't go.  My son did not want to stay for programming after choir, so my wife did not come in to sit with the youth that morning.  Just me, with my thoughts on my phone games, lunch and the prayer that we would have a snow day on Monday (we didn't).

I've said on this blog many times, and it was a running joke for any who know me from my childhood days, that I had a new school for each year of my elementary and secondary education.  We were urban nomads.  From apartment to suburbs, to condominium, that feeling of liminality--I didn't have that word coined as of yet, that feeling of sleeping in a new bed under a strange roof--had always been as central to me as my personality.

The structure of the summer move led me to sports, to use humor as an ice breaker and provided me with an observer's point of view in just about any group I was in participate.  I was the follower.  I had leadership qualities--I always landed in the middle of the road on personality quizzes--but I sometimes chose to remain back to where I can see the entire picture.

Eventually, this life in which I thought I could control, led me to Ohio.  Again, I found myself in this liminal state.  Then God shouted and pursued me enough that I was forced to listen.  Now I'm sitting in a room full of youth describing what it means to love God, to worship Him and to live a life that He's calling us to live.  There are no accidents.

Tim later talked about how being in youth ministries is different from talking with the adults.  Youth aren't so much set in their routines--my Lisa overly used the word "random" enough when she was 14--as adults.  I pick up the same cup of coffee from the same coffee shop each day on my way to work.  I walk down the same hallway to work, the last door on the left.  There's a butt pad on my seat, the DNA of clutter surrounds my table and work areas.  Being random means stopping for ice cream, singing songs with the kids.

And I'm then, at a crossroads.  Life in Men's Ministry is wooing me and I know the seas will be difficult to maneuver--we had an event that drew 150 last year, but drew only 85 or so this year--not so much for reaching out to men and what spiritual cleaning will do to me.  When Jesus moves into your heart, He begins to rummage through those dusty journals you leave in the crawl space.  He begins to rearrange furniture, adding events to your calendar in permanent marker.  Pretty soon you realize the heart you once called your own isn't yours,that it never was to begin with.

But that's okay.  Wherever God is leading me to, I go willingly.  He's been preparing me thus far.  The least I should do is step into the threshold.  Make it my own.  Make it ours.  His.