The in-betweeners

Standing in the breach and why it matters

Photo by Warren on Unsplash

Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.—Isaiah 58:12

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.—Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

The prophets of old—Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah and the like—are often misunderstood. They were not predicting the future as mere barefoot fortune tellers in need of anger management training. They were righteous awesome dudes speaking truth to power.

“I hate, I despise your festivals,” Amos admonished the wealthy Israelites, the one-percenters of their day. During a time of relative peace and prosperity in ancient Palestine, these landowners jacked up the rent on their sharecroppers but made a show of their burnt offerings in temple every Sabbath, publicly claiming piety. Forget all that if you want to please the Lord, said Amos. Rather, “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (Amos 5:21-24) Could be my favorite line in all of the Bible.

The early prophets were not foretellers but forth tellers. They often found themselves standing in the breach between a grumpy, disobedient people and their often angry and sometimes malevolent God. Moses himself once talked God out of destroying His people by fire.

We are not prophets, you and I, but we are sometimes called to stand in the breach: to stand between the oppressed and the oppressor—even at the risk of being hauled off to jail, not unlike Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan, arrested by the FBI last week for standing between a person being afforded due process in her courtroom and an increasingly lawless government bent on intimidation.

Sometimes the breach is not nearly as threatening, however. More often than not, it shows up in our lives as a thorny question or a potentially life changing decision. Do I sign up for night classes? Do I tell a friend whose toxicity has worn me down that we are no longer friends? Do I leave home and try starting over in a new town? You have a choice: You can stay the course or take the leap.

How often do we take that step? Plant ourselves squarely in the in-between space? Think of all the expressions we have for occupying that undesired set of coordinates at various times in our lives: ‘Tweens, the awkward, hormone-cyclone years between childhood and adolescence. Crossing a threshold from one life to another (like single to married), which may be desired but is scary nonetheless. The sandwich generation, caring for both kids and parents and skimping on self-care.

Neither here nor there. Stuck between a rock and a hard place. The breach comes in many forms. There are many rock-and-a-hard-place places.

One problem with in-between spaces is that they can be lonely. Not only can that not feel safe, you may also be questioning your own sanity because no one else is standing there with you. No one else can make the decision for you. Are you doing the right thing?

I’ve had these doubts a-plenty. After much trial and error, I have found it helpful to think of an in-between space as a liminal space and standing in the breach as in invitation to growth. I can recall a time years ago when I agreed to perform a one-man magic show in a black box theater. As opening night approached, I couldn’t sleep. I was so nervous; I was dreading it. What was I thinking when I agreed to do this? Then, about a week before the show, late one night as I tossed and turned in bed, I actually could feel myself growing. I really sensed that I was about to take a leap. The jitters were a good sign. My DNA was getting an upgrade. Suddenly I couldn’t wait to step out onto that stage.

That’s what liminal means—a time of change, a time of growth, of looking forward and leaving self-doubt behind. A gathering of energy. You only get to liminal by standing in the breach.

Long before that one-man show, long before I became a minister, I wrote annual reports. The CEOs of those companies would wonder at the outset how to tell their story for that year. “Where do we start?” they would ask. “What’s our theme?” I would suggest they think of themselves as being in the middle chapter of a three-chapter story: Who were you before, who are you now, and who do you hope to be?

It was a trick question. You could ask yourself this every day for the rest of your life. Could it be that we are always standing in the breach? Might it be that we are always on our way to becoming the rebuilders—the repairers and restorers of streets to live in? If so, then scary is good. Not only that, but because so many of us feel this way, lo and behold, the breach is not so lonely after all. There are legions of us standing there underneath the waterfall of justice rolling down, awash with righteousness, ready to build the bridge between what was, and what could be.