Borderlands

We are living in a liminal time, housed in the borderlands, the space between easy determination.  A space often filled with shadows, tall trees and mystery as boundaries shift and the space between the known and unknown wavers. 

It can be a time of uncertainty, a time of hazy excitement, when change seems to be around every bend. Some are wonderful…others not so much.  All transformations entail upheaval and require navigation.  

Traditionally, borderlands are transitional zones where the veil between worlds is thin or absent.  These areas can be literal geographical locations, such as edges of a forest or riverbank…or more abstract spaces like dreams or memories.   In Celtic mythology, borderlands are often associated with the Otherworld, the realm of the gods, the dead, and the magical beings.  These liminal places are the points of passage between the living world and the otherworld.  

They are also points of passage during uncertain, disorientating times when many things long held as secure have become uncertain. It’s a time of shape-shifting with things long-believed are stripped of meaning and left as dust, tainted and tarnished. Things of grandeur are now rubble.

And, what is left? 

Much remains, if we can see past the tangled mess of chaos.   The truth that was there before, that has always been there, still remains.  

We are not left to navigate the borderlands on our own.  The ley-lines of wisdom and love, hold fast and provide guidance for uncertain times.   Nature is our best guide in this new world we find ourselves in.  As Dale Pendell comments, “Though the gods have the power of speech, more often they choose a flower or a plant”.   We are surrounded by conduits of grace that communicate loudly, clearly, even dramatically if we choose to see.  

In the liminal light, look carefully, as magic may await there. Liminal times offer moments of grace.  They import warnings.  They offer solace.  They provide a path for discernment, reminding  us that we are not alone, even as we traverse the borderlands.  

They are the burst of warm sunshine in the clearing of a forest; they are the moment of perfect stillness and peace alongside the shadows.  They are the dramatic vistas that remind us of the powerful magic around and within us.  Infrared photography participates well with this magic  as it captures light invisible to the human eye and finished images often reveal features that were not initially visible. What first appears as a hazy, red image is transformed into a wondrous, surprising display that often speaks to hidden mysteries and greater truths. 

Illusions have cracked and perhaps shattered.  But, they were just illusions.  What is deeper?  What truths hold firm? What is being created from the shards?  It is a threshold time, a sacred disorientation where transformation is not just possible, but inevitable. 

In losing one’s sense of self, time, place, and identity, we enter into a more expansive state of being. We realize that the mundane and the ordinary is, and always has been, sacred.   We are on the border between old and new, the mruig,as it would have been referred to in the Old Irish.  We wait in the borderlands in this time of grace and uncertainty, fear and determination, disoriented, but eager and willing.  We learn to rest in our own stillness, amidst the shadows, taking in moments of wonder that provide a stable footing in a chaotic world.  As David Whyte wrote, “Let your solitude become a healing balm; creation will bloom from stillness.”   A new landscape, new possibilities and new ways will surface out of these borderlands.