The Free Dictionary defines evolution as “a gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form.” Long before I called it by its name, I was evolving. Long before I embraced it as a mantle and a gift,
I Was Liminal.
I return again to the words of Isaiah, who has, for so much of my life given poetic context to the paths along which I wander.
This is what God says, the God who builds a road right through the ocean, who carves a path through pounding waves, The God who summons horses and chariots and armies—they lie down and then can’t get up; they’re snuffed out like so many candles: “Forget about what’s happened; don’t keep going over old history. Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand-new. It’s bursting out! Don’t you see it? There it is! I’m making a road through the desert, rivers in the badlands.” Isaiah 43:16-19 (MSG)
Rivers in the Badlands. Streams in the Desert.
Even in places stripped bare by nature, God pours living water. Both/and. Old, yet new. Everchanging while I am still, watching for God on the Horizon. I evolve, even as I wait. I have lived my life in perpetual motion. Always doing, always imagining, always conceptualizing the next thing. While movement is commendable, consider all the indistinguishable blurs you’d see out of a bullet train window, and compare those images to the wide vistas and lush pallets unfolding before you as you meander along a mountain path.
Which is a Better View?
They Both Are.
Ecclesiastes 3 teaches us that to everything there is a season. As I approach a new season in my life, like cairns bearing the fingerprints of ancient travelers along the trail, I leave my mark, understanding that sometimes, most times, the cost of my lesson is the testimony I am bound to share.
Djeli. Storyteller.
When I was a little girl, being called a “storyteller” (because we were not allowed to say “liar”) was not a good thing. I am no longer a little girl. I am living a life God wrote for me in order that I might tell the stories. What else did God write for me? A call to evolve, changing from the way I’ve always been and the things I’ve always done in order to be the me God intended, more complex, less afraid, freer to follow a divine calling. How?
“Launch out into the deep, and let down your net…” Luke 5:4 (KJV)
The words of last Sunday’s sermon close my lesson for you. God wants us to thrive, to evolve (be better), but only when we’re ready to say “yes.” Be liminal. You don’t have to be entirely ready, you just have to be ready to try.
What Happens When You’re Ready?
According to the sermon . . . you evolve.
“In unfamiliar waters, everything changes.”
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I am a very serious person, so I laugh a lot. I write because it helps me understand the way I feel about the world. I married my high school sweetheart, and together we made two exceptional people and raised a dog so remarkable, I wrote a book about the faith lessons he taught me. I envision a world where each of us embraces the Perfect, Precise Image of God that we are, naturally, at every given moment, even as each of us exists in a liminal state.
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