Upside down

I finished my paper on hospitality. I examined it as a 'liminal' event, as one on the edges. Thinking about liminality is carrying over to my next paper on the Holy Spirit and making me reflect on liminality in my own life and the significance of ritual. It occurs to me that a lot of the time my life feels like one long liminal experience and I think this is because while I have had the separation phases and the liminal phases, I've not had the 'reincorporation' rituals and experiences of life events like Proper Jobs, marriage and childbirth to mark my way. I also left my country for another but I haven't truly arrived. Plus I claim a faith that is inherently liminal until after death. I need a ritual to help me arrive. I'm not sure what that means in practice - maybe I have to spend a night out in the woods or shave my head - but I think it would make me feel less fragile, less angry, more grounded, more at peace.

I am too far out of town

according to the map

I am too often folding and unfolding,

I must be lost, or holding it upside down,

I shall write mine across it while I must

wait for heaven where my dust on dust

will not be read or seen,

and called neither good nor bad,

just: understood

as if complete.

~ Leo Vroman Competition (excerpt)