We need all of us, whatever our background, to constantly examine the stories inside which and with which we live. We all live in stories, so called grand narratives. Nation is a story. Family is a story. Religion is a story. Community is a story. We all live within and with these narratives. And it seems to me that a definition of any living vibrant society is that you constantly question those stories. That you constantly argue about the stories. In fact the arguing never stops. The argument itself is freedom. It's not that you come to a conclusion about it. And through that argument you change your mind sometimes. And that's how societies grow. When you can't retell for yourself the stories of your life then you live in a prison. Somebody else controls the story.
—Salman Rushdie
Into the liminal (Hirshfield)
For most members of a community, the liminal is a point of transition, entered briefly, at a particular time, in passage toward something else; such persons are dipped into nonidentity and self-forgetfulness in order to change who they are. For some, though, the liminal becomes their only dwelling-place—becomes home. A writer must invent for himself how to live this way.
Jane Hirshfield, from Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry
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