We need transformation, not false transcendence

By RICHARD ROHR

“The good news is that you eventually internalize community. The bad news is that you
will never get to where you can handle it alone.”
-- Robert L. Moore

I am convinced that without experiences of liminal space (that place where all
transformation happens), there is no truthful perspective on life. Without truthful
perspective, there is neither gratitude nor any abiding confidence. It is precisely this deep
gratitude and unfounded confidence that I see most lacking in our people today, even the
people of the church. It makes me wonder whether we are doing our job. We are not being
initiated into the mysteries.

Victor Turner, in his classic study of initiation, The Ritual Process, says that some kind of
“shared liminality” is necessary to create what he calls communitas, or what I would call
church. Communitas in a spiritual sense does not come from manufactured celebrations or
events. Havenʼt we all tried that? It is forgotten the next day or even the next hour. It
depends on artificial stimulants of food, drink, music, shared common space and energy. It
is really lovely and probably necessary, but it does not transform. It merely sustains, and it
is often unfortunately diversionary from the deeper task. True communitas comes from
having walked through liminality together -- and coming out the other side -- forever
different. The baptismal drowning pool was supposed to have ritualized just such an
experience. But something happened along the way. Baptism became a pretty blessing of
children.

Why donʼt we have much communitas on the other side of the pool? Maybe because there
is no drowning pool to sacralize our drowning experiences, and there hasnʼt been for
centuries. Why is it that we experience both liminality and communitas much more in
groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, in places like Ground Zero, in people like cancer
survivors, than we do in most churches? Why is it that church people by and large mirror
the larger population on almost all counts (and this can be statistically verified) except that
they happen to self-identify as Christians? With some grand exceptions, of course, I would
have to say that we are not a genuine alternative to mass consciousness. On the whole,
we tend to be just as materialistic, just as warlike, just as individualistic, just as protective
of power, prestige and possessions as everyone else. We pray together on Sunday
mornings, and most of us do have several moral stands through which we define
ourselves. They are not necessarily the moral stands of Jesus, however. For example,
Jesus never mentioned issues like abortion, birth control, or homosexuality, but he made
an awful lot of simplicity of lifestyle, status reversal and open table fellowship. Really quite
amazing.

Not bad, just dangerous

At the risk of being unfair and even making some enemies, I am going to say that much of
the church I have experienced in my 58 years of life and 31 years as a priest is much more
“liminoid” than liminal. Liminoid experience substitutes group think, shared and engineered
feelings, mass reassurance and group membership for any real or significant personal
transformation. It works real well. It creates false transcendence in just enough dosage to
inoculate people from Real Encounter. It takes away oneʼs sense of aloneness and oneʼs
sense of anxiety -- and for most people this feels like “God.” And, of course, God is so
humble and well practiced that God will use all of these things to bring us to Beloved
Union. As I keep saying, these things are not bad, just dangerous and highly productive of
delusion. In the world of the Spirit, the real sins are usually quite subtle. The devil is used
to dressing in clothes that draw no attention to himself or herself, and if the clothes do,
they usually impress us.

Letʼs clarify the distinction between liminal and liminoid: Liminoid is the Catholic control
freak, suddenly teary eyed while the choir sings “O Holy Night” at Midnight Mass. Liminal
is the mother in the hospital waiting room who finally hears the meaning of the song for the
first time, and she is interiorly changed. Liminoid is the sudden “United We Stand” bumper
sticker appearing everywhere, when there have been no noticeable movements toward
American healing, forgiveness or reconciliation on any real level. Liminal is the very real
fragility, compassion and humility that I have seen on the faces of World Trade Center
widows. Liminoid is the camaraderie at football stadiums and rock concerts -- which does
take away some momentary alienation. Liminal is the amazing trust I have experienced at
the county jail here in Albuquerque, when the macho Mexican guys go to their knees after
Communion. The same men who normally would never be caught off guard or close their
eyes in one anotherʼs presence. In each case, the first is pseudo-religion, which is
everywhere. The second is church, which is also everywhere, but does not have a sign out
front.

Message of powerlessness

I do not think that Jesus came to create a religious tribe. I think Jesus is a universal
message of powerlessness and true power that all religions and all people need. I do not
think Jesus came so we priests could dress up and Rome could feel good about itself; I
think Jesus came so that all people could “dress down” and universal communitas could
be possible. I do not think Jesus came so that people could be pious and separatist, but so
that all human beings could start trusting the nakedness and the vulnerability that he had
to trust unto the very end. How else will communion ever happen? When has quick self-
assurance, ready-made answers and dogmatic-truth-dogmatically-presented ever united
anything? It only circles the wagons of those already in the circle. This is not
evangelization in the way Jesus and Paul practiced it. They were “all things to all people.”

Although I have not been able to check it out, two different scripture scholars have told me
that Jesus is asked 183 questions directly or indirectly among the four gospels. Do you
know how many of these he directly answers? Three! Jesusʼ idea of church is not about
giving people answers but, in fact, leading them into liminal and dark space, where they
will long and yearn for God, for wisdom and for their own souls. This is itself -- and always
has been -- the only answer. He says it so clearly in Lukeʼs Gospel (11:11-13). Jesus says
that the answer to all our prayers is exactly the same: the Holy Spirit. Pray for bread, fish
or egg, pray for whatever you want. God might give you these things, but what God
promises is that you will always receive the Holy Spirit. That is Godʼs answer to every
prayer and to every question. We ourselves would prefer to give and receive seminary
textbook answers, thank you. They keep us liminoid, and we can avoid that terrible space
where only God is in control and where God is the only answer.

Once in a while church is liminal space, and often it prepares us for it. It keeps the pot
stirred so that when the fatal ingredients are dropped into the stew of life, all the necessary
spices and condiments are ready to do their work. I have seen church as liminal space in
charismatic prayer meetings back in the 1970s when they were absolutely God-centered
and dangerous. I have seen church as liminal space when the just word is preached at
funerals and times of immediate crisis in a neighborhood parish. I have seen church as
liminal space when the Eucharist actually creates communitas and reconciliation among
Hispanics and Native Americans in the Santa Fe Cathedral. I have seen church as liminal
space when the daring table fellowship of Jesus is actually practiced at Catholic Eucharist
and long-alienated people are brought to tears and brought home. I have seen church as
liminal space just this year at St. Andrew the Apostle in Chandler, Ariz., and Pax Christi
Parish in Eden Prairie, Minn. So much life and so much ministry goes on in these places
that one actually thinks it must be a different religion than the usual Roman Catholicism.

Satisfied with passivity

I donʼt know why we are satisfied with such utter passivity in most Catholic parishes. Are
we actually happy to be kept as subservient little children who ask for nothing and give
little in return? (We are one of the lowest of all churches in terms of per capita giving!) It is
bad enough that we priests are content with such overwhelming passivity, but sometimes I
think we actually prefer it. It keeps us in control, with no one asking hard questions, and
actually decreases the workload. Participatory faith community is a lot of extra work and
meetings and people. Church as liminal space would require solid biblical preaching,
contemplative Eucharists, and a cadre of female and male spiritual directors and
ministries. Instead, we are reasserting the role and centrality of the priest like never before.
Even the deacons must kneel. Siege mentality, I guess. The quiet noncooperation and
passivity will only increase, I promise you. Bishops, please listen.

So what might we do? We must stay on the journey ourselves. We must trust that this
darkness, this tragic time, is also light unimaginable. This is where and how it happens.
This is how it has always happened. This is the liminal space we have been talking about.
We donʼt need to go create it artificially. Lent is everywhere now. We are all in it, like
Jonah, running from Nineveh, caught unwillingly in the belly of the whale, and thrown to
him by friends.

Time, time, trust, and more time. We are being cooked. The job of the ritual elder in
initiation, according to Robert Moore, is to keep us in the stew pot, which is the cauldron of
transformation. The elders must keep the temperature hot, while also “stewarding the
boundaries” so that people do not take fright and run. Few of us are prepared for this. But
such ministry keeps people in the true liminal space of a transformative church, where
eventually, in Godʼs time, we will be spit up like Jonah on the right shore. For now, we do
not even know what or where the right shore is. All we know is that we cannot run from
Nineveh.

Franciscan Fr. Richard Rohr, a popular retreat master, speaker and writer, is founder of the
Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, N.M. This is the third in a series.

National Catholic Reporter, February 15, 2002