Finding the Sweet Spot Between the Known and The Unknown
Two weekends ago, I hunkered down with members of the Methodist Church Tauiwi Strategy and Stationing Committee, meeting in the familiar and peaceful surround of the Franciscan Catholic Retreat Centre in Hillsborough Road, Auckland. I was there in my spare half-time capacity this year to assist the work of Mission Resourcing as it transitions into a fresh new configuration for the whole church in 2025. Exciting and daunting. Sitting on the sideline as we moved through the full agenda of items and issues gave me privileged opportunity to observe, listen, and ponder on the significance of this critical point of transition we within Te Hāhi Weteriana o Aotearoa find ourselves living through in the immediacy of the now – but the not yet.
Ed Catmull, American computer scientist, creative animator, and co-founder of Pixar maintained, ‘there is a sweet spot between the known and the unknown where originality happens; the key is to be able to linger there without panicking’.
My thoughts turn again to what I know, have, and will, continue to experience of significant transitional experiences, such that we find ourselves in within this movement of people called Methodist here within Aotearoa. There is a familiar, predictable pattern to any major cycle of transition. Firstly, something ends. Secondly, there is an in-between season marked by disorientation, disidentification, and disengagement. Finally, and often after a very long and painful struggle, something new emerges.
The middle phase of the process is of sacred importance. It is by nature and of significance a liminal space, or as the Celtic peoples name as ‘thin’ spaces. Celtic spirituality and many Indigenous spiritualities near and far, acknowledge that it is in these ‘thin’ liminal spaces, where the presence of the divine is keenly palpable. Thin spaces are wild, messy places – threshold spaces where God is very much at work. It is in these thin spaces that we, individually and collectively, are broken open, and we come afresh to encounter ourselves, our relationships with others and with God, in deeper and more authentic ways.
Writer, contemplative, Franciscan brother, Richard Rohr speaks vividly of God’s use of liminal, thin, threshold, places. “All transformation takes place here. We have to allow ourselves to be drawn out of “business as usual” and remain patiently on the “threshold” (limen) where we are betwixt and between the familiar and the completely unknown. There our old world is left behind, while we are not yet sure of the new existence. That’s a good space where genuine newness can begin … It’s the realm where God can best get at us because our false certitudes are finally out of the way. This is the sacred space where the old world is falling apart, and a bigger world is revealed. If we don’t encounter liminal space in our lives, we start idealizing normalcy.”
The natural human response is to resist liminality and to strive backward to the old familiar identity, or forward to the unknown identity. The ambiguity and disorientation are at times so heightened that the very work required to move forward can become impossible to engage.
In the days following my attendance at the Tauiwi Strategy and Stationing meetings, as often happens for me after such intensity of meeting, I found myself deep in thought – hopeful thought - ever more convinced that we as Te Hāhi Weteriana o Aotearoa must find the discipline and stamina to stay within this daunting yet sacred, thin, threshold space and place we find ourselves poised within. Already and Not Yet. That is the way we are called to follow. It’s what reformations are always about.
Remember the words of Ed Catmull, “there is a sweet spot between the known and the unknown where originality happens; the key is to be able to linger there without panicking.’