Purposeful Exile
I begin this reflection with a serious apology to all those people in forced exile. Refuges. The poor. Long-term sufferers with physical pain, or disability, or mental illness. Socially rejected. Spiritually bound.
I have the privilege of reflecting on exile in a safe zone. I live in absolute shalom – wholeness. I have options. I have escape hatches. Yes, God has called me on exile – I feel constrained, compelled – but at this season of life it feels more like invitation than slavery.
It is one thing to opt to be on exile – it is quite a different story to be forced into exile.
I realize that my experience is far different than that of a political or religious refugee, or a woman caught in the trap of sex trafficking, or the working poor stuck in the cycle of poverty.
Even the notion that I might need to create “exile” space through intentional activity feels arrogant in the face of the exile of many. However, my experience is my experience. I cannot change the fact that I was born into opportunity because of my social reality.
Privilege does not come without warning from the King of exile –
“Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God”
(** Matthew 19:2, quoted by all three synoptic gospel tellers).
If I am reading Jesus well, it seems that people in exile are better situated to be on exile. When living with daily poverty or deprivation it is not as far of a mental jump to spiritual poverty. But again, my reflection is from the side of opportunity. I think we all think the other guy has it better. Whether she does or not is totally subjective. So I must initially address exile from my vantage point.
People of privilege need to be proactive in creating space of exile. It is too easy to get trapped in the movements of the Empire. I need to step out not to be swallowed up. I need spaces of liminality.
Liminality was coined by van Gennep from the Latin word limen, meaning a (“threshold”). Victor Turner built on the work of van Gennep using the word liminoidto refer to any experience that is outside the normal flow of life and that leads to a fresh understanding of self or ones relationship to community. I became aware of Turner’s work when studying rites of passage in Africa. Then the concept of liminality became instrumental in developing rites of passage for my own children.
[Note – the professor in me wants to take off on a deeper description of that term in anthropology but I am going to resists. For those of you with the interest you may want to do some basic research on Charles-Arnold Kurr van Gennep and Victor Turner, two anthropologists from the 20thCentury. Or give me a call – I’d be delighted to wax eloquently, or not so eloquently, on this notion].
The more I reflected on the notion I began seeing these liminal experiences as key in every chapter of the spiritual journey. When I listened to people tell the stories of their “come to Jesus” moments they often involved a liminal experience – retreat, service or missions trip, Bible camp, silent weekend, etc.
The more I thought about it, I began to notice that I have built liminal experiences into my daily and weekly. These sacred spaces lead to fresh encounters with God and a resulting better understanding of myself.
For example, I am part of a tradition that embraces a daily “quiet time.” Quiet time follows the pattern of Jesus’ life. He regularly went off to a place of solitude to commune with the Heavenly Father.
Quiet time for me is a time of devotion set apart every morning where I pray, read my Bible, journal, meditate, interact with other authors, and so on. For me it is generally an hour or two, outside the flow of every day life. Stepping out of the flow of activity heightens my sense of alertness to the voice of God.
It also tunes my ears to the tone and cadence of his voice. I need this because I live in a noisy world and I often have a noisy heart. By starting the day in tune it is easier to reconnect his voice through the day when there is so much competing noise.
One of my mantras for the past three years has been Alignment for Assignment. My quiet time aligns me to the Holy Spirit who then reveals assignments throughout my day.
Quiet time is liminal.
We also have weekly patterns of stepping out of the flow. One is Sabbath. For those of us who are not vocationally engaged in the church it often falls on Sunday. We change the rhythm of the day. Again we are following the model of God himself – he created in six days and then rested on the seventh.
Many of us go to church on Sunday for a worship service. That phrase alone is filled with many misunderstandings. It might more accurately be stated that . . .
We the people, the church, gather in a space we often refer to as a church, for a capstone praise and prayer time that is the culmination of a week of worship in all that we were and did. The rhythm of going to church realigns my life to rhythms of God. Corporately I praise and give thanksgiving for what God did in the previous week. I take in Word and table, and I pray, getting ready for God to do the same in the week to follow. Corporate worship praise centers my life.
Gathering with the people of God in worship praise is liminal.
So what is liminality?
It is purposeful separation from the norm. These periods are different than normal life – we step out of the regular activity of the everyday to get fresh insight and perspective. As a result our spiritual senses are not clouded by the noise of the mundane but alert to a more holy voice.
I have read the story of many people on exile with Christ through the Centuries. One of the common themes is the need to step out of a noisy world to be purposefully on exile with the Lord. We tend to think that only our contemporary world is noisy. I will say that it might be more outwardly noisy due to technology but the heart has always needed to be exhorted back into quietness.
Moses needed a burning bush to get his attention.
Yahweh commanded his people through the Psalmist – be still and know that I am God (Psalm 46:10).
Jesus purposefully created solitude space for quietness to realign with the Father.
Exiles need quiet solitude to stay the course.
I heard the following quote from Amy Carmichael recently,
“We profess to be strangers and pilgrims, seeking after a country of our own, yet we settle down in the most un-stranger-like fashion, exactly as if we were quite at home and meant to stay as long as we could. I don't wonder if apostolic miracles have died. Apostolic living certainly has.”
Exiles are strangers, pilgrims, boundary crossers in the apostolic tradition of announcing and demonstrating allegiance to another Kingdom. Amy was on exile for 55 years in India. The last 20 of those years she remained bedridden after a severe injury from a fall. We could say that she was in exile for those 20 years. But she purposefully remained on exile in exile. During that period she wrote 16 inspirational books that have advanced the faith of many long after her exilic years on earth.
Her solitude was forced by injury. Her exile was actively maintained by a life of chosen moments of liminality where she tuned her heart to the voice of God.
I choose into that life today. How about you?
On exile with you in a long tradition of exiles.
