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Over the weekend it was reported that a group of prominent UK business leaders have written to the Brexit secretary urging a transitional arrangement as soon as possible, as firms need to make serious decisions and contingency plans. The current lack of clarity, they argue, risks the loss of jobs and investment. Almost seven months ago, the Prime Minister triggered Article 50 and ushered in, what can best be described as a liminal period. The early twentieth century ethnographer Arnold Van Gennep coined the term “Liminality” (from the Latin word for threshold) in relation to rites of passage, where an individual transitions from one status to another. Such rites of passage occur in numerous cultures and religions, and they are often accompanied by highly specified ceremonies such as those that mark, birth, puberty, marriage and death. What these ceremonies share in common is that they frame space in between two states of being, or two realities. Such as for example, the transition between childhood and adulthood. An initiate in a coming-of-age ceremony is no longer a child, but not yet an adult either. Their previous identity is dissolved, while their future identity is not yet formed. Liminal spaces, are by their very nature ambiguous and disorienting even as they contain potential and possibility. Liminality is a crucial stage in religious experience as well. In the Prado Museum in Madrid hangs a haunting painting by the Baroque artist Jusepe de Ribera called Jacob’s Dream. The Bible tells of the traveling Jacob who falls asleep at the roadside, at a location later to be named Beth El (House of God), where he dreams of a ladder soaring from earth to heaven upon which angels ascend and descend. Unlike many other artists who are drawn to the fantastic content of the dream, Ribera depicts the sleeping Jacob with particular emphasis on his subject’s face. It exquisitely captures the betwixt and between of liminality, reflecting Jacob’s suspension between two realities; the terrestrial and the celestial. The thing about liminality is that it can’t be maintained long term. One travels through liminal space, one cannot remain there indefinitely. The triggering of Article 50 On the 29th of March moved us into a liminal space. We are no longer what we were on 28th of March nor have we transitioned into something new. But it’s not just Brexit and formal rites of passage rituals that confront us with liminality. We all find ourselves in liminal spaces every now and then, often not of our own choosing. Such spaces can be paralysing if we are unable see beyond them. But understood and used properly they can be vital to positive self-transformation.