Liminal As A Concept Is Over

Reality Is Uncanny

Fish on a stick. Can’t beat it.

I’m in the State of Jetlag, having just returned from nearly a month in Japan. These weird jetlagged states always make me write goofy stuff, so be warned. Still, getting yanked out of my life and living in a state of incomprehension, or greater incomprehension than usual, provokes thoughts. Here’s a rundown:

1. I remember being totally in love with the word “liminal” a few years ago. The concept called to mind a serene in-between. A place between one space and the next. I started seeing things, and thinking of things, as “thin spaces” where heaven and earth nearly touch, where the wonder of love breaks through like light slanting through the tree canopy to make certain spots glow on the forest floor.
   
   Nowadays, that no longer feels right. My mother is unwell. My nation is unwell. Technology is warping reality, pulling our world into our phones and spitting it back out until nothing makes sense for more than a moment, and then we’re back to the senslessness of flux. The edges between states are blurred. Each moment is no longer a discrete snapshot of time, it’s a constant warping from one thing into the next, but not in a narrative that I can follow. Reality is becoming uncanny. There’s a violence to the quality of change these days as we spiral into the absurd. Our leaders are treating reality itself as an AI prompt that they can just toss words into, and we all live the hallucination they generate.
   

2. I have been traveling to and from Japan for 26 years, and I lived in rural Japan for three years. My relationship with that country has gone from infatuation to adoration to alienation, dislocation, and now admiration. This recent trip was wild. I was there for the premiere of a short film that my wife and I made a few years ago. This was an incredible experience.
   
   A Japanese program called Mirrorliar Films works with directors, both famous and unknown. They pair some of these filmmakers with local municipalities in Japan to try to expand awareness of film throughout Japan. They screen these resulting short films in a nationwide program. Although I wasn’t a part of any of those collaborations, my film was selected as part of the program, and as a result, I was invited to attend several public events.
   
   I stood on stage in the company of some very famous Japanese celebrities. There was banter on stage, of which I understood almost nothing. I just blinked into the collective gaze of 600 people in a sold-out venue and smiled. Sometimes someone would make a joke, and the audience and people on stage laughed. I laughed too! And I wondered what I was laughing about. It was fun to meet directors in Japan and to be a part of the program. I hope I get to do it again.
   

   

3. This year, more than ever, I’ve taken the liturgical calendar into account. Lent wasn’t a thing in my childhood home, and Easter was one day, not a season. Lately, as it feels like the foundation of my culture is pitching about like a small boat in a big storm, I’ve been grasping for something enduring, and have been surprised to find tremendous comfort in the way that Christians of yore mapped the seasons to their religious life. When I was young, I felt like tradition, especially religious tradition, was a straitjacket. But now I find it more like slipping into an old pair of boots that I’d forgotten in the back of the closet. The stiff leather has been broken in for me, and they provide support and comfort as they carry me on my way.
   
   The calendar was shaped over centuries by people who lived according to seasons, both emotional and agricultural, and some of these practices were inherited from very ancient times. The rhythms and cycles of our joy and suffering deserve some formality, I believe. Or at least mine do.
   
   As I’ve tried to step into this practice a bit more, it’s been eye-opening. The introspection of Lent takes place during a season of long coldness, and low light. The emergence into Eastertide, a season with an emphasis on joy as practice, as something I must try to do, has been extremely helpful. And the bigger story of death and new life is one I relate to more and more as the old me dies and the new me is born. Sometimes the old me was a guy with no back pain, and the death and new life into one of aches and pains is a sad one. Sometimes the old me is a guy with an obsession over something that I finally let go and the new me is a liberation. Sometimes the old me is a guy who took certain truths about his nation to be self-evident, and which are apparently no longer evident to all. Amid these passages from one life to another, I feel myself in good company with practices that span time. There is consolation there.
   

4. While in Japan I visited some gorgeous temples. I also learned about my late father in law, Ken, a man I always admired. When we visit his former home, we offer a prayer at the shrine my mother-in-law keeps, as is the custom in Japan. I learned that Ken’s family was a member of a Buddhist sect that believes salvation is offered to all people, not as something to be earned, but something that is given. Apparently, this view of salvation as a gift was a break from another view that salvation was granted for acts of devotion. My own beliefs align with that. I believe in grace, an unearned gift and invitation into communion with God. To see such a similar theology in Japan and the same discussions over what our relationship is with the divine makes perfect sense on one hand, but is astounding on the other. I love that monks on two sides of the world find themselves immersed in a truth that eternal love is the greatest blessing.

   
   

5. Two tips most folks who frequently travel to Japan know:

   1. Haneda airport is better than Narita, by far.

   2. Get there early enough to squeeze in a meal before your flight. There’s a restaurant that serves a gorgeous dish that I’ve had three times now. Silky, creamy tofu, (real) wagyu with egg and rice, tempura, miso soup, pickles, and eel. It’s the perfect sendoff.

It’s good to be back. I look forward to waking up at normal hours.