Liminal Space

Trusting the Bees

"The old world is dying and a new world struggles to be born."
⟡ Antonio Gramsci, 1891-1937

Placing my hand on a swarm. April 2020. Sebastopol, California

When a hive swarms, they are in a kind of Bardo, an almost otherworldly state between incarnations. Perhaps this is why they appear in folklore throughout so many cultures as holy messengers, thought to pass seamlessly between the living and the realm of the dead. The ancient Celts believed honey bees could carry communication to souls who had crossed over from this world to the next. They were thought to deliver divine messages, poetry and even the gift of prophecy to humans. Such was the power of bees to traverse the in between, to slip through the veil betwixt the heavens and the underworld.

A few years ago, in early Spring, I went to visit Michael Thiele, founder of Apis Arborea and a mentor of mine. He makes log hives to support honey bees in the wild.  He had hollowed out a few large redwood logs and transformed them into hives for me to install in trees on our land and I had come to his home that morning to pick them up. When I arrived, he greeted me with his usual graciousness but today his bright eyes held a glint of magic.  He said he had something extraordinary to show me.

I followed him in silence along a row of fragrant cedar until we came to a gap in the trees. We paused there for a moment, suspended. I noticed that the toes of my leather boots were wet from the dew soaked grass and a blanket of tiny white wildflowers fanned out around me. The sound of a songbird pierced the air with such clarity that I was sure it had startled the buds into blooming. I stepped through the opening in the trees as if crossing a threshold, drawn in by a proximate hum. There, to my sheer delight, hanging only ten feet or so in front of me in a shaft of sunlight was a miracle —a full beard of honey bees pulsing with life. They were swarming. I was spellbound. Michael left me alone with them.

I gravitated nearer to the cluster of bees, aware of a peculiar flutter in my heart, the nervous excitement of coming face to face with the unfamiliar tinged with a primal fear of getting stung. To my surprise the bees didn’t seem to mind my presence. They just carried on as I stood there like a pillar of salt, bearing witness. A few were coming and going purposefully while those in the undulating huddle vibrated their wings with such intensity that I could feel it like distant thunder rolling through the valley of my collar bone.

I had entered an altered space, one that engendered reverence and awe.  I inhaled deeply, pausing ever so slightly at the top of my breath as if cresting a wave before exhaling all the air from my pink lungs. I could feel clouds of emotion and the chatter in my mind leaving me, almost as if it were being drawn out onto an invisible loom, dissolved, transmuted.

I continued to breathe slowly, intentionally—in and out, unaware of the passing of time. Urgency vanished. What struck me most was the absolute tranquility of the swarm. Their energy permeated my cells. I felt, at once, calm and completely alive. The swarm exists in a womb-like state, hovering between worlds. The bees were allowing me to participate in the liminal space of their becoming.

After a while, I had the impulse to gently rest my open palm over the swarm. To my amazement, it felt like a warm furry mammal breathing beneath my hand. Each winged pollen bearer, each maiden nurse bee, the guardian bees, the fat round queen—each making up the intricate body of a singular being.

The magic of this experience imprinted on the landscape of my body like a hieroglyph, a transmission I’m still only just beginning to interpret and integrate years later.

honeycomb

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

⟡ Antonio Machado, 1875 –1939
(translated by Robert Bly)

Here in Northern California, we are at the midway point between Winter and Spring. To be alive is a kind of liminal space unto itself I suppose, an open field of possibility between the doorways of birth and death. We are forever navigating the expanse between who we have been and who we are becoming. Then, layered in, there are the transitions we all go through in the course of human experience –  the rites of passage, all the in-betweens. It’s only the illusion of some sort of control that keeps us moored to the shore when in reality we are swimming in a perpetual sea of impermanence and uncertainty. I’ve really been feeling this lately. Perhaps it’s because I have, all of the sudden, noticed that I’m growing older (when and how did this happen?!). My body is changing. Coping strategies that have gotten me through in the past are no longer working to take me where I want to go.  I’m writing a new chapter. I’m learning grace from the poppies and the peonies and strength from the pines. I am more intimate with my own mortality even as I feel I am only just beginning the proper work of living.

This somewhat uneasy sense of liminality is accentuated by a world in the throes of radical change. Anxiety, fear and anticipation permeate the collective realms. We all feel it. Things are shifting. Worn out illusions are being stripped away. Narratives are crumbling. The systems of domination and control that have fixed reality in place for so long are losing their grip.  With war raging across the globe, the worst of human nature is on full display. Even as we watch tragic patterns being repeated, so much of what had been hidden in the shadows is now being brought into the light.  In the midst of the chaos and immense suffering, there is a deep yearning.  Where will choose to go from here?

The root of liminal comes from the Latin limen meaning threshold and, so it is, that we seem to be on the threshold of a new world. We are hovering between what is known and familiar and what will come next. This is a sacred time. A time that has been prophesied by the ancestors in many cultures—a time of death and transformation, a time of gestation, a liminal space.

The essential question is not, “What will happen next?” but rather, “Can I surrender to the not knowing?”. The world is infinitely complex and heart breaking. So much tragedy is unfolding beyond my control and still, the scarlet tulips with wells of bright yellow pollen at the center will appear like clockwork along the fencerow in early Spring (this will also happen beyond my control, how wonderful!)

Even as we are busy sculpting reality with our thoughts and deeds, each moment is an invitation to be with what is, just as it is.  Not so easy for a tenacious doer like me but sometimes just allowing myself to be with the feeling of helplessness or grief, no matter how uncomfortable, is the only way through, a way to not lose touch.

To feel all there is to feel—the disappointment, the joy, the terror and fatigue, the wild fire of my own desire. Let them all come. No feeling is final. No state is permanent. Just one breath at a time. One moment, then another, and another after that. When I slow down to feel, my heart softens. In this open space without borders or rules, creativity arises, fresh possibilities emerge.

Like a singular bee in the swarm, you and I are both inseparable from the whole. Our destinies are intertwined, whether we are aware of it or not. We are part of a living, breathing mosaic draped over the Earth, a generative force dreaming reality into being.

How we inhabit the liminal is our depth of capacity to be with Spirit, Jehovah, Allah, the Divine Mother, the Mystery at the heart of all creation, the place from which all life emerges. If we listen close, the bees can teach us what they know.

A log hive installed in a flowering ornamental cherry tree on our land in Cazadero