A Time of Transition: Lingering in the Liminal
We live within a time of great change. A seismic shift is occurring, delineating the edges of a world that once was and a new world that is coming into being.
Your body may already feel this. Even if you don’t yet have words for it. Even if your mind says keep going — your deeper rhythms know: Something is ending. And something else — not yet born — is pressing near.
In Between Worlds
The socially constructed world continues to insist that everything’s fine. That our urgency is irrational. That the ache in our chest is simply burnout. That the tears at the edge of our eyes are inconvenient. That if we just keep scrolling, keep producing, keep adapting… it’ll all work out.
But our nervous systems — and the earth’s — tell a different story.
This isn’t just a change of season or generation. It is an epochal threshold. And I’m not the only one sensing it:
“We are undergoing a crisis, torn between an old world that is coming to an end and a new world that has already begun.”
— Maria Montessori“This is a shifting of culture, science, society, and institutions enormously greater than the world has ever experienced.”
— Dee Hock“The crisis we are experiencing is not the sort of upheaval that marks the passage from one historical period to another. It can be compared only to one of those biological or geological epochs in which new, higher, and more perfect forms of life appeared…”
— Maria Montessori
Something is dying. But this moment is not just collapse. It is contraction before birth. Not simply an end — but the tension before emergence.
“Our moment of disruption deals with death and rebirth.
What’s dying is an old civilization and a mindset of maximum ‘me’...
What’s being born is less clear but in no way less significant.
It’s a future that requires us to tap into a deeper level of our humanity.”
— Otto Scharmer
There is a name for this moment in living systems theory: the bifurcation point.
“At this moment, the system is at a crossroads, standing poised between death and transformation…It is known as a moment of great fear, tinged, perhaps, with a faint sense of expectation. At this point, the system’s future is wide open.”
— Margaret Wheatley
The bifurcation point is not theoretical. It is somatic. It is felt. It is now.
We are standing with one foot in each world. And it hurts. The strain of trying to make sense inside systems that are dissolving. The pressure to stay productive while our inner compass spins. The grief of recognizing that what used to work is now harming what we love most.
“We are still in the period of transition from one age to another, standing with one foot in each. As the two ages draw further apart we feel increasing strain, and will continue to do so until we place both feet firmly in the age we are entering. We can of course step the other way and try to live our lives in a dying age. By so doing, however, we accelerate the demise of the institutions and the culture that are affected by such maladaptive behavior.”
— Russell Ackoff
At this moment, our future is wide open. Who we choose to be in this liminal space matters.
“Abandoning its present form, the system is free to seek out a new form in response to the changed environment. Even the forces of evolution are not constraining.”
— Margaret Wheatley
Continuity Within Impermanence
Let me tell you a story about a tomato plant named Sarafina. She was not the ordinary kind you’d find in tidy raised beds with garden markers and planned yields. No. She was wild. She grew in river stones. In the “no-growth zone.” She wasn’t planted -- she arrived.
And instead of climbing upward, Sarafina sprawled outward — ten feet wide, maybe more, in every direction. She was unruly. Undeniable. Abundant. She fed neighbors and friends. She made people pause. She wasn’t “productive.” She was generous.
And then, one day in late fall — she stopped. I had seen the signs of winter coming and tried to blanket and preserve her. But there was no way to prevent the inevitable.
Some will say she was only a plant. But I’ve mourned her. And I will never forget her. Because the whole time she lived, I was watching. Listening. Letting her change me. She taught me to orient to a deeper rhythm — one that values presence more than permanence.
And I’m most grateful I had thought to sow her seeds. As we had eaten her fruit, we offered equal share back to the earth. So now? Her offspring continue to emerge each year — not clones, not cuttings, but seeds that remember.
This is a new design ethic: Not scale — but fertility. Not replication — but regeneration. Not preservation — but lineage.
What Becomes of This Season
Here we are in November. And I’m reminded of Sarafina’s last bloom. That feeling when you know something is ending — but it hasn’t ended yet.
That’s where I sense we are as a global society. Not just navigating a passage between seasons — but between worlds. The old world is still visible — but dimming. The new world is whispering — but not yet formed.
And we? We are standing in the in-between. The breath before the bifurcation. The hush before the turn.
We get to decide what this time becomes. Wasted time — in denial? Wasted energy — in conflict? Or sacred time — together in truth, grief, and anticipation …preparing for what’s next?
This moment is not asking for control. It is asking for compost. For the breaking down of old forms into nutrients for what comes next. Some people will cling to the dying world. Pour their energy into preserving its patterns. Treat the grief as an enemy and the future as a threat.
But others — maybe you — feel the invitation to something else. To pause in this long in-breath. To feel the disorientation not as failure, but as initiation. To begin listening for the world to come. To be guided by the ancient call of the crickets. To remember the wisdom of lineages — both ancient and emerging. To become the kind of people who can midwife an epoch.
This is the invitation. And you are not alone. 🜃