In her book “How to Lead When You Don’t Know Where You’re Going: Leading in a Liminal Season,” Susan Beaumont offers valuable insight into healthy and unhealthy ways of navigating what she calls “liminal seasons”–those seasons of transition where something has come to an end, but the next thing has not yet emerged. In between the ending and the next beginning is a dynamic season of ambiguity that is uncomfortable–therefore often avoided or rushed. But, Beaumont says, if communities can claim these liminal seasons and give them the attention and tending they request, the new thing that emerges will be better off for it. When communities dismiss, minimize, or rush through the liminal season, the new thing that emerges carries the unresolved grief/loss forward.
One of the important things to do during a liminal season is to reshape institutional stories. Beaumont offers a variety of different kinds of stories that dwell within communities, and says that all these stories (origin stories, hero stories, glory-era stories, ‘who we are’ stories and shameful past stories) need to be reshaped.
What Beaumont says about reshaping shameful past stories is particularly relevant to the current outcry against racism and racial inequality in the U.S. Beaumont’s thoughts on liminal seasons and reshaping institutional stories supports what Austin Channing Brown says in her book I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness: “White people need to listen, to pause so that people of color can clearly articulate both the disappointment they’ve endured and what it would take for reparations to be made.”
“Every organization has stories about its founding era and its glory days. Many organizations also have stories about painful chapters that describe who they were when they were at their worst.” For the U.S., the story about the painful chapter in history is the deep and long story of white power and influence over people of color. This was not a chapter that is confined to the civil war or later to the civil rights movement. It is much deeper than that and goes back to the very origin of the nation. Beaumont says that these “shameful past stories” may not even have a coherent storyline, because they’re not openly talked about and so haven’t developed a coherent telling (in contrast to ‘glory-era’ stories which can become simplified versions of reality that get told consistently the same way every time and become entrenched in the community identity). When the story isn’t brought out into the open and continues to be untold, the build up of shame leads to dysfunction and unhealth.
“To heal a spiritual or psychological wound, the wounding event must be remembered, and it must be remembered rightly,” Beaumont says. I think this is what the protests are about in the U.S. The wounding of minorities at the hands of powers, systems and individuals that favor white people must be remembered rightly.
Beaumont references the work of Miroslav Volf in how to rightfully remember the pain of past events. Rightful remembering must incorporate:
- Remembering as truthfully as possible. Rightful remembering requires recounting as factually as possible what happened.
- Acknowledging the wrong that was done. Without acknowledging the wrong that was done, the victim is victimized twice–once when the injustice occurs, and again when it disappears.
- Viewing the remembered experience in a new light. As the process of rightful remembering continues, the story of the past wound/s can be told in ways that led to healing and redemption.
- Protecting the victims from further suffering and violence. “The shaping of the memory cannot cause any further suffering for possible victims.”
I see these aspects of reframing institutional memory as really significant when thinking about racism in the U.S. What I hear the black community saying is that the story of race in America has become what Beaumont calls a “thin narrative”–a story that dismisses the reality of injustice, systemic oppression, and deep prejudice–in favor of the dominant white culture. White people are being called to account for the way we dismiss the voices and the pain of others. See also what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says about, “The Danger of a Single Story” on this concept of a ‘thin narrative’.
When using the 4 phases that Volf offers, I don’t think the dominant white culture has gone through phase 2–we have not acknowledged the wrong that was done. When we are confronted with the institutional story of racism, we become defensive, evasive, dismissive, or aggressive in justifying the way ‘we’ remember things and the way ‘we’ tell the story. How many times in a conversation about race have I heard white peers and friends say “I grew up being taught not to see color…to just love everyone the same”? How many times have I been the one to distance myself from the conversation in some way? This kind of remembering of the story is telling a thin narrative, minimizing the wrong that was done (even if we specifically weren’t the ones to do it), and dismissing the pain of the victimized individual or community. Brown adds this: “But reconciliation is not about white feelings. It’s about diverting power and attention to the oppressed, toward the powerless.”
If we cannot acknowledge the wrong that has been done–which means hearing the stories of injustice, prejudice, violence, and oppression without excusing, justifying, or dismissing our part in it–the institutional story cannot be re-shaped and the communal wound cannot heal. We are not yet ready to view the remembered experience in a new light. We are clearly not yet protecting victims from further suffering and violence.
If we do not tend to how we tell the story of race in America, we limit the possibility of moving forward. “Our memories of the past ground our hope for the future,” Beaumont says. We must do the work of remembering…of listening to the way other people remember…of challenging the way we have come to tell the story. “An effective retelling of the memory helps an organization figure out what it needs to do next, based on the best of its past identity.”
“Trouble the narrative. History, Scripture, Social Revolutions, Black Struggle cannot be boiled down into one convenient sentence.”
Austin Channing Brown
We cannot avoid remembering because it’s uncomfortable. On a small scale, every time a story of injustice reaches the public, we go through the transition process–something comes to an end (trust in each other, assumption of equality, sense of peace and safety), there is a time of turmoil as we respond, point fingers and assign blame, react, grieve, and process that which has been lost, and sometimes something new emerges (changes in policies, deeper awareness of privilege that influences behavior, stronger conviction and commitment for organizing for justice and advocacy). But when we don’t tend to this remembering well, whatever comes next runs the risk of being superficial and structurally weak. That’s why, when another situation of injustice comes to light, we go through the cycle again, and it feels like nothing has actually changed.
How can we sit in this liminal space–with all the unrest, discomfort, and chaos that comes with not knowing where we’re going–and really tend to that which has (or must) come to an end? How can we create space for grief and lament as we allow the pain to be painful without retraumatizing victims? How can we reframe the stories of our shared past in ways that complicate the thin narratives, acknowledge the varied dimensions of our history, reclaim the values and beliefs that describe us on our best day, and use all of that re-remembering to shape our desired future? How can right remembering help us move forward?