Liminal space

Review: After College

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment

After College

After College, Erica Young Reitz. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2016.

Summary: A faith-oriented guide to navigating the transition from college to early adulthood, exploring issues of faith, relationships, community, work, calling and finances.

Much has been made about the loss of faith that sometimes occurs among youth who go to college. Less attention is given to the deepening of faith of others or the spiritual awakening of some that occurs during college. Even less have there been good discussions of how believing students navigate the transition to post-collegiate early adulthood. Until now.

Erica Young Reitz, who has led the Senior EXIT program, a senior year college transition program at Penn State, has given us a kind of roadmap describing the transitions post-collegians face, and what it means to live faithfully to Christ in a new situation. In her introduction, she writes:

“Leaving the gates of university life often comes with the expectation that we’re ready for what’s on the other side. But what does readiness even mean? Some students feel ready in September of their senior year (get me out of here!) while others—who may actually be more equipped for the “real world” than they realize—dread college coming to a close. In the scurry of résumé preparations and job applications, it’s easy to reduce readiness to our emotions about entering adulthood or to a list of key items necessary for life on our own.”

The first part of the book explores what faithfulness to Christ looks like in this new situation. She explores what it is like to go, like Abraham, with God into the unknown. She considers our expectations of “normal” and whether these have room for adversity, in which we might experience taking up the cross in new ways. She explores the big question of discerning God’s will, especially when faced with a myriad of choices.

Part two then explores what faithfulness looks like in community. She honestly discusses finding new friends post-college and the challenge to become hospitable people. She talks about finding a church, with some helpful material for those who have experienced different forms of abuse in their church experience. She talks about the diversity of people we will encounter and going out of our comfort zones. She gives very practical counsel on the matter of parents and moving from dependence through independence to a healthy form of interdependence. She candidly discusses dating, sex, and marriage, post-college. I especially appreciated her practical counsel about not living together while saving up for the storybook wedding, which seems to be the narrative of many young couples.

The final part of the book concerns living out our calling faithfully in the world. She includes chapters on stewarding every area of life for the kingdom, dealing with the realities of the workplace, and our handling of finances. She offers a very practical discussion of workplace realities and what it might practically mean to “bless” our co-workers. In the area of finance, she offers helpful resources including a budget planning sheet and challenges the assumption that it is necessary to take on large car loans and consumer debt, freeing one to use more resources for kingdom aspirations.

The book is informative without being preachy, using a number of stories while also giving very practical tips. Reitz helps people understand how this period is a kind of liminal space that may feel disorienting or painful, and how to live as a person of faith in this time. Each chapter concludes with “Going Deeper” questions that could be used individually or in a group discussing the book. There are passages for scripture study as well as a few additional relevant books suggested.

This is a great gift for graduating students. Even better, it would make a great discussion resource for a semester discussion with a group of seniors. The issues Reitz raises also raise important questions for those of us working in collegiate ministry. Are we waiting until senior years to talk about things like the will of God, community, work and calling, money and sexuality? We probably talk about sexuality before then, but what about the others? Are we simply mentoring students for our mission on campus or also for their mission in life? After College is a great resource to help students navigate this crucial transition from the former to the latter.

 

Repost: On Liminal Space

/ rtrube54 / 2 Comments

This series of reposts has been a kind of “liminal space”, coming roughly at the end of my second year of blogging–a kind of “in between” space as I move into both a new blogging and academic year. Lord willing, I’ll be back tomorrow with new posts. In the meanwhile, I hope you enjoy this one from last year.

* * * * *

One of the ways to impress friends (and maybe gain some sympathy if they understand you) is to say that you are in a “liminal space” in your life right now. I’ve come across this idea more and more in the past few years and particularly this week at the conference I am attending. A liminal space is the undefined boundary between two clearly defined spaces. The threshold to my house (the front stoop and entryway) is a liminal space between outdoors and the indoor living areas of my house.

In many instances, this term is used to describe a life transition. Pregnancy is a liminal space between just being a couple and being parents–between something that was familiar and something that will be totally new. It can be the space between losing a job and getting another one. It can be things like “mid-life”, that odd period somewhere in your forties where you realize you are no longer “young”, where you see changes in your body, and you are asking questions again of what’s it all about?

This is actually a good term for something my wife and I have been experiencing. This is the year we enter our seventh decade, complete with Golden Buckeye cards, courtesy of the State of Ohio. A number of our high school and college friends have already retired. While I’m not there yet, we’ve noticed some interesting changes and new questions we are asking.

For one thing, we are becoming far more ruthless in deaccumulating. I was cleaning out a desk we are preparing to sell and discovered old notebooks from seminary and college that I haven’t looked at in 30 to 40 years. And for the first time, I had the courage to say–I don’t need to keep this. I also recently got rid of several boxes of books I realized I either would never read or never look at again. And I feel like we are just getting started.

In my work I’ve found myself moving from simply thinking about my own goals and career development to nurturing these in younger colleagues. While I still have challenging assignments and great ministry opportunities among the students and faculty with whom I work I am thinking more and more about encouraging and empowering others and handing off to a new generation of people in our organization. I’m really not intimidated by that–I want what we are doing to outlast my working years. I find myself thinking more about not simply ending work at some point but wanting to finish well–something older workers don’t always do. In particular, I don’t want to be the old crank!

I’ve found we’ve begun pursuing more avidly interests we just couldn’t consider during the peak years of work and being parents. And so we go painting, take photographs, write blogs and sing music. We’ve learned you can audit courses for free at Ohio public universities when you are sixty and are thinking about this. Health permitting, we expect to have a life after work and it is interesting to begin cultivating what that might be and asking what that will look like.

One thing about liminal spaces is that one is going from high def to low def. I really don’t know what life after work entirely will be like. One of the things we learned today is that it is very tempting to rush the answers to these questions rather than to spend some time lingering with the questions, which often leads to greater self-understanding and better answers. Low def is uncomfortable yet it can be a place for growth.

One would think we’d have life figured out by this point. Wrong! We’ve never been to this part of life before, other than watching parents and older friends go through it. In my faith, we talk about growing in Christ-likeness, or as I like to speak of it, growing into our “size Jesus” clothes (thank you for that image, Andrea!). I’m so glad I still have opportunities to learn and grow, even if it means new questions and uncertainties. It seems to me the only alternative is stagnation, and to me that would be to die before I’m dead! Liminal space seem far better.

First posted here on July 22, 2014.

On Liminal Space

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment

One of the ways to impress friends (and maybe gain some sympathy if they understand you) is to say that you are in a “liminal space” in your life right now. I’ve come across this idea more and more in the past few years and particularly this week at the conference I am attending. A liminal space is the undefined boundary between two clearly defined spaces. The threshold to my house (the front stoop and entryway) is a liminal space between outdoors and the indoor living areas of my house.

In many instances, this term is used to describe a life transition. Pregnancy is a liminal space between just being a couple and being parents–between something that was familiar and something that will be totally new. It can be the space between losing a job and getting another one. It can be things like “mid-life”, that odd period somewhere in your forties where you realize you are no longer “young”, where you see changes in your body, and you are asking questions again of what’s it all about?

This is actually a good term for something my wife and I have been experiencing. This is the year we enter our seventh decade, complete with Golden Buckeye cards, courtesy of the State of Ohio. A number of our high school and college friends have already retired. While I’m not there yet, we’ve noticed some interesting changes and new questions we are asking.

For one thing, we are becoming far more ruthless in deaccumulating. I was cleaning out a desk we are preparing to sell and discovered old notebooks from seminary and college that I haven’t looked at in 30 to 40 years. And for the first time, I had the courage to say–I don’t need to keep this. I also recently got rid of several boxes of books I realized I either would never read or never look at again. And I feel like we are just getting started.

In my work I’ve found myself moving from simply thinking about my own goals and career development to nurturing these in younger colleagues. While I still have challenging assignments and great ministry opportunities among the students and faculty with whom I work I am thinking more and more about encouraging and empowering others and handing off to a new generation of people in our organization. I’m really not intimidated by that–I want what we are doing to outlast my working years. I find myself thinking more about not simply ending work at some point but wanting to finish well–something older workers don’t always do. In particular, I don’t want to be the old crank!

I’ve found we’ve begun pursuing more avidly interests we just couldn’t consider during the peak years of work and being parents. And so we go painting, take photographs, write blogs and sing music. We’ve learned you can audit courses for free at Ohio public universities when you are sixty and are thinking about this. Health permitting, we expect to have a life after work and it is interesting to begin cultivating what that might be and asking what that will look like.

One thing about liminal spaces is that one is going from high def to low def. I really don’t know what life after work entirely will be like. One of the things we learned today is that it is very tempting to rush the answers to these questions rather than to spend some time lingering with the questions, which often leads to greater self-understanding and better answers. Low def is uncomfortable yet it can be a place for growth.

One would think we’d have life figured out by this point. Wrong! We’ve never been to this part of life before, other than watching parents and older friends go through it. In my faith, we talk about growing in Christ-likeness, or as I like to speak of it, growing into our “size Jesus” clothes (thank you for that image, Andrea!). I’m so glad I still have opportunities to learn and grow, even if it means new questions and uncertainties. It seems to me the only alternative is stagnation, and to me that would be to die before I’m dead! Liminal space seem far better.