Living in Interstitial Times

This week it snowed for the first time in Ithaca, in Cortland. Perhaps, like me, you spent some time hustling to get the last summer things into the basement, to locate the snow shovels and the car scrapers. What plants that can overwinter indoors are safely indoors. On my porch the petunias who somehow escaped the freeze are still blooming, along with begonias who weren’t so lucky. This change of seasons is an interstitial time -- a time of in between, of no longer this but not yet that. That’s what Interstitial means, the space between, or if we go back to the roots of the word it means literally, “between standing”.

Some of you will remember 5 years ago, this congregation was gathering online. After months of the Covid social distancing, we started our church year with high hopes of meeting together again in person, when a new, stronger wave of the virus emerged. And back to Zoom we went. We were right in the messy, uncertain, middle of the Covid shut down; we had set off from the place of normal-ness, and had been traveling through the in-between for months, and were no closer to the shore. It seemed like everything was up in the air, remember? It seemed like the ground was crumbling under our feet. The essence of an interstitial time. We wandered in the wilderness of uncertainty. We wondered if we would survive, if the church would survive, if UU would survive.

Today, we know some of how that turned out. We know that as a church we did survive, and have new members and visitors and energy, and sense of purpose.

We have changed in important ways- who could have imagined before Covid we would have multi-church multi-platform worship, with new friends from Athens to Cortland from Corning to South Carolina that we first met on zoom.

Some things changed and cannot change back – the loved ones who died or moved away. The churches who were not so lucky and closed their doors forever.

Other things we missed are back, pretty much just like before - like potlucks and Ukelele group and Organ crawls.

But just as we felt we were getting our feet under ourselves, the ground began to shake again. The new supreme court ended Roe v Wade, the inauguration last year began a series of orders dismantling structures we thought we could count on. Laws we thought applied to everyone seem now as flimsy as the paper they were printed on. Like the East wing of the white house, now a pile of rubble, some things will never be the same again.

I remind you of all this to help us notice a pattern, what happens during interstitial times, what it feels like -- this time of between standing. I imagine having one foot up in the air, ready to step forward. There’s a precariousness to it.

As Siobhan MacMahon writes in her poem "Mapping a New Reality":

When words shape-shift
beneath your feet,
spelling another reality...

Have you had that feeling recently, like things are shapeshifting under our feet? I want, first of all to just affirm that this is not because you are not doing enough self care, this is because all of us together are in a liminal time, and each of us feels it in our own way. Liminal times are challenging by their very nature. In stable times, we can rely on our routines and habits, those years of experience and practice, of muscle memory and following a good plan, but when things are in flux, everything takes more energy, more discernment. When the ground shakes during interstitial times it wakes us up. Like missing a step on a staircase, it gives us a jolt. Interstitial times need us awake and paying attention. 

The poet’s idea not to trust the old maps, is a good one. The landscape is changing, and we can’t just do what we’ve always done and expect everything to be okay. The seasonal change of autumnal colors remind us it’s time to prepare for winter. That first freeze will remind us the hard way if we haven’t had our furnace serviced, or brought in the last of the zucchini. Fortunately, the change of seasons is dependable if disorienting. We put away our map for summer, and take out he one for fall, and then winter.

Just so, among the old dusty maps, there stories and guidance, compass and sextant to help us navigate times like these. Andy reminded me of the story of Jesus in the wilderness, during that in-between time before he started his public ministry. The Christian Gospel of Matthew says that Jesus fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was famished. It is then when Jesus is at his most vulnerable, the devil appeared to him and suggested he turn the stones into bread. He tempted Jesus 3 times, and each time Jesus declined. [Matthew 4:1-11] During that in-between time in the desert the choices Jesus made were important. Imagine how things could have ended differently, if Jesus had said yes to even one of the tempter’s questions, a lot of history would not be what it is.

Biblical scholars tell us that 40 day time it is supposed to remind us of the 40 years that the Jewish people wandered in the desert, after they had escaped slavery in Egypt and before they found their land of milk and honey. After the people had been traveling for a year or so, they complained, “We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic, 6 but now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.” [Numbers 11:5-6]

These old stories remind us that the people have moved through wilderness times before, that they are not easy, but that what we do makes a difference. (Remember the golden calf?) This is a time when it is particularly important to let our values and principles, our faith and love guide us.

When there is no clear path before us, when the landscape is changing, we must learn to rely on our own inner compass, as individuals and as a community. 

MacMahon writes:

you must leave

Behind The broken compasses,
burn The man-made maps
and head for home,

Following the knowing
in your bones, the aching
of your heart,

By Home, I don’t think she is suggesting we head home to hide under our covers, she means that spiritual home where we live in alignment with our values, that spiritual home that our aching heart longs for, not only for ourselves, but for all beings.

I saw follow your hearts this last week. When SNAP benefits were cut and people were desperate and hungry, we heard people step up at joys and concerns to talk about concrete actions they were taking by raising funds, advocating or making meal kits. Spontaneous heartfelt ethical responses to an unfolding emergency in our community. Then after service at Cortland, our congregation hosted community members from Feed our Neighbors and Mutual Aid, and hosted our first every community conversation about how we want to respond to food insecurity in Cortland creatively across widely different perspectives. There was some fresh energy because of the SNAP crisis, but the conversation was about a long-term solution to holes in the safety net. By following the knowing in our bones, something new began to emerge.

Because while there was a stable system in place before the government shut down, things were not okay. People were still hungry. This SNAP shutdown moved our hearts and spirits, and asks us to look with fresh eyes at a system that was already broken.

That is why a time like this, an interstitial time, is a powerful time. When things are in flux, there is a possibility for movement, for change that is not possible when everything is stable. In their book You Only Get What You’re Organized To Take, Liz Theoharis and Noam Sandweiss-Back  call this a “Kairos moment.” We talked about Kairos time last week, how it’s a sacred time, a deep time, a powerful time. It’s a time when careful discernment and action are critical. They write, “Positive change is not chronological and it is never promised. It is a choice that must be made; an action that must be taken” [p. 192]

Because this is a time when progress is not the only possibility, the instability also lends itself to the kind of wealth and power grabs we’ve been seeing this year. It is a time of possibility and danger. Fortunately, we have been preparing for such a time as this. Consider that moment in the spring of 2020 when the Black Lives Mater movement caught fire. Our congregation had been working for years addressing racism, studying, creating community dialogue, building networks, and when the Black Lies Matter movement swept though our nation, we were ready to do our part. In his book “The long Haul” Horton writes “We cannot create movements, so if we want to be part of a movement when it comes, we have to get ourselves into a position” [p. 139] by creating connections with organizations, with our neighbors, with those whose voices need to be heard. Horton is using the word “movement”, to refer to those powerful moments when the passion to act sweeps through a critical mass of people, and change that had seemed impossible, begins to take form. We can’t make a movement happen, but we can be ready by studying, strategizing. By building networks and community organizations we prepare for such a time as this.

I think you feel it. I think it is for this that the energy in our congregations is up, not just our congregations, but in many communities of faith and community organizations across the country. As we sat in that social hall after church last week, a young woman I’d never met who described herself as Baptist said she was there because Jesus literally told us to feed the poor. Mic drop. We feel in our bones that now is a Kairos moment, and what we do now matters. For those who believe it may feel like a call from Spirit.

These are times to follow the “knowing in your bones, the aching in your heart” These are times to prepare and to act when the moment is right, when the movement towards love and justice rises around you. What we do now makes a great deal of difference.

These times are interstitial times, unsteady, uncertain. So much we know and count on seems to be in flux. When we are between standing, one foot up in the air ready to step forward, we must step – we cannot hover there forever. We move one foot at a time, if the trusted roads have crumbled. Finding and testing each foothold as we move into an emerging world we create as we walk.