Letter from the Editor

What is a liminal moment?  There is the anthropological meaning when a person, or a whole society, is transformed from one role to another.  The time between, when the person is no longer what he was but is not yet what he will be, is the Liminal stage.  People mark this time with formal ceremonies, from the most fervent religious rituals to raucous high school graduations.

There are more literal thresholds we cross: birth, adolescence, illness, death.  Some  believe that life itself  is a liminal passing into the eternal.  Certainly nature makes spectacular liminal displays, framing each day with the sun rising and setting. The liminal glow can be brief, vivid, elusive, then gone.

Imagination is a liminal state from which the creative impulse emerges–the batter imagining the ball, a baby deciphering the sky, hearing a painting hum. The liminal moment is when we transform nothing into something.