Liminal Space

Do you feel it? Can you see it? While daytime temps remain quite warm, the nights are cooling off and there is a distinctive nip to the air come dawn. The Sun's arc across the sky is dropping now to the south, with the very angle of sunlight different than it was mere weeks ago. Our local Farmers Market is full to overflowing with the harvest of summer, yet it is this very bounty that reminds us that we're being carried ever closer to fall. 

I, for one, couldn't be more delighted. Autumn is in my bones. While it's hard not to feel an almost giddy boost with the expansiveness of summer, as a fall baby and an introvert to boot, I begin longing for the relative quietude of autumn somewhere around the middle of June! An exaggeration perhaps, but I'm sure glad a shift is underway. 

The Sun has entered Virgo, the astrological sign that signals this liminal time. After the boldness of Leo, a sign ruled by the very Sun itself, Virgo's energy is not quite summer and not quite fall, but a bit of both. Virgo encourages reflection, a metaphoric harvest of all we have gained from these last few months, and a coming back to center after the wild ride most of us have been on since spring sprang and summer claimed us as its own. Virgo also helps us prepare for what is to come. 

My morning walks around the lake are usually taken at a clip fast enough to make any cardiologist proud. This morning, though, I feel the need for a more leisurely pace. I slow my steps, but still they are too quick for the cravings of body and soul. I soon veer a short distance off the path to climb a tumble of small boulders to a perch with a gorgeous view of the lake below, solid and sturdy mountains stretching into the distance. A flurry of swallows soar and dip below, evidence of a recent hatch of delectable flying insects. 

As swallows dine on those wee morsels, I feast on stillness. This summer has felt more raucous than usual, and I treasure these moments away from my loved ones with nothing clamoring for my attention but this expanse of beauty. Sitting upon my own solid and sturdy mountain of boulders, I feel breeze on my face and smell its freshness. A sound to my right makes me turn my head, making eye contact with a fawn only a yard or two away. She pauses for a few breaths before stotting off again. 

Yes, I feast on all of this. With each and every breath, I settle into the peace of this place, and feel it soaking into my very cell tissue. 

Back at my computer now, I am thinking again about transitional times and find myself curious about the etymological origins of a word I used a few paragraphs back. I discover that liminal comes from the Latin limen, meaning threshold or sill. It is also linked to the Latin limitem from which stems our English word limit. As I search out the roots of that word, I find myself tunneling ever further down a warren of etymological rabbit burrows as I recognize I have only been viewing limit from one side. 

While limits often do imply a door firmly closed, they do not mean only that. Etymology online, tells me that limit is related to the Latin limus, which means to traverse, while traverse, from the Latin trans, meaning across, and vertere, meaning to turn, means literally to turn across. Just as a liminal space is a threshold to elsewhere, the limits of what we know and have experienced up until now need not be seen as end points. They can be bridges inviting us to cross over into what has never been before...and to become what we have never before been. 

So where does all this wordplay leave me? This liminal time of Virgo season can be a pause point, one in which we look back, reflecting on where we've been, and absorbing the gifts and metabolizing the challenges that have come with summertime. Virgo also encourages us to look ahead, and to make any needed adjustments to step forward in the most wholesome way possible. Virgo is the healer of the Zodiac, the sign that can help us find practices that sustain, so essential as we consider our next steps. 

We stand at a threshold, our feet on the sill of a doorway that is not closed or locked up tight, but opens wide. It beckons us to traverse into the unknown, promising novel experiences, new learnings, and the opportunity for fresh versions of ourselves to come into being. Our lives open outward from here. They call to us, encouraging us forward across the threshold into what has never before been, through autumn and winter and the spring and summer to come. 

I am ready. I'll see you there.

Leia