Started by Bethany Joy Kim, April 01, 2016, 01:41 PM (Read 4245 times)
To be created is to be marked by liminality. In reading the creation story in Genesis 1, we often attend to the ways God separates one thing from another, creating order with these divisions. Light from darkness, sky from water, water from land. Yet the boundary between each of these divisions is fluid and permeable. Light and dark meet at dawn and dusk; sky and water meet in rain and snow and fog; water and land meet where the tides ebb and flow. Often these “thresholds” evoke deep beauty: the colors of twilight, the gray pillar of a monsoon in the distance, the lapping of waves at the shoreline. We feel ourselves drawn to these thresholds, and they remind us of our own liminality. We are fundamentally open toward the world and toward one another. We are porous and permeable. The recognition of our liminality directs our attention to our Creator. We come from dust, and we shall return to dust (Ecclesiastes 3:20), and this acknowledgment reminds us that we are inextricably linked to the rest of creation, and fully dependent on the One in whom “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). To be created is to be marked by two kinds of liminality. We are marked by the first kind of liminality in our interdeterminate relationships to the rest of creation. We experience interdeterminate liminality as we seek to articulate the ways we are different from one another and from the rest of creation, as well as to articulate the ways we are the same (Plato). The thresholds that are part of the created order provoke us to inquire about the relationships between light and dark, sky and water, wet and dry. In our efforts to describe these relationships we struggle with ambiguity and disorientation, passing back and forth across each threshold in an ongoing effort to name the distinct parts and describe their relationship to one another.
To be created is to be marked by liminality. In reading the creation story in Genesis 1, we often attend to the ways God separates one thing from another, creating order with these divisions. Light from darkness, sky from water, water from land. Yet the boundary between each of these divisions is fluid and permeable. Light and dark meet at dawn and dusk; sky and water meet in rain and snow and fog; water and land meet where the tides ebb and flow. Often these “thresholds” evoke deep beauty: the colors of twilight, the gray pillar of a monsoon in the distance, the lapping of waves at the shoreline. We feel ourselves drawn to these thresholds, and they remind us of our own liminality. We are fundamentally open toward the world and toward one another. We are porous and permeable. The recognition of our liminality directs our attention to our Creator. We come from dust, and we shall return to dust (Ecclesiastes 3:20), and this acknowledgment reminds us that we are inextricably linked to the rest of creation, and fully dependent on the One in whom “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).
To be created is to be marked by two kinds of liminality. We are marked by the first kind of liminality in our interdeterminate relationships to the rest of creation. We experience interdeterminate liminality as we seek to articulate the ways we are different from one another and from the rest of creation, as well as to articulate the ways we are the same (Plato). The thresholds that are part of the created order provoke us to inquire about the relationships between light and dark, sky and water, wet and dry. In our efforts to describe these relationships we struggle with ambiguity and disorientation, passing back and forth across each threshold in an ongoing effort to name the distinct parts and describe their relationship to one another.
The full paper is attached to this post as a PDF will be attached to this post as a PDF once it is available.
I loved this paper when you presented it last year, @Bethany Joy Kim. As I said then, it's one of the most creative takes on theological anthropology I've read.
I have been waiting for this paper for so long! I missed it last year and have regretted it ever since. Can't wait to read it!
Thanks guys! I'll try to get a decent draft finalized for posting as svs prep wraps up.
