Thresholds

Moving to London, turning thirty (soon), looking ahead

A few weeks ago, I experienced something interesting: boarding a plane in one year and waking up in the next. Swiping through the miniscule screen attached to the seat in front of me to select which movies I’d watch for the next eight hours, I enjoyed the ambiguity of living for a little while in what people call a “liminal” space: a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold. It felt fitting for the dislocation I had been pondering as I was transported not only from one year to the next, but one world to another: from the desert dry grandeur of the Colorado mountains to the gloomy, damp-deep-in-your bones, languid London.

And not only these two physical worlds, but the person I am and have become in both. I grew up in the shadow of the rugged Colorado mountains. I learned to drive on the backroads of the Black Forest, I watched the fourth of July fireworks over Palmer Lake every year, I attended a mega church, I drove eighty miles an hour on a freeway every day to get anywhere. When I am home in Colorado, I am immersed back in a world which goes on, largely, without me. A world much of which feels almost unimaginable in my life in London, where I do not drive, where instead of a mountain there is a winding river which orients the city, and where the closest thing to a mega church is Holy Trinity Brompton. But Colorado does not disappear from me when I am in London. Colorado still lives inside of me; a sometimes shadowed but ever-present interior landscape walking around London within me. I am a liminal space; both sides of the boundary.

I first moved to the UK nine years ago, but after moving to London last month, I feel like a new ex-pat all over again. I used to describe those first months of living in a new country like using your left hand; you can just about manage it, but it takes extra concentration to do things you would otherwise do without thinking. Grocery shopping when the shop doesn’t have what you expect it to, getting from A to B when you’re not quite sure of the geography yet, and registering for a thousand things (gas, heat, water, doctor, loyalty cards for the coffee shops you think you’ll frequent). You would think things wouldn’t be that different moving from Scotland to England; after all, I’m still in the United Kingdom. But I think the change I’m feeling is not merely (or even primarily) the change of moving from one country to another, but from small town to big city. I’ve never really lived in a proper big city (I don’t feel that the suburbs of Los Angeles Count). And to me it feels like cities, no matter what country they are in, are a world of their own. In that sense, even though it belongs to the same nation, there’s ways in which where I lived in Scotland shares more with Colorado than London.

This move to London has made me reflect on how much has transpired over the past (almost) decade in the UK. I completed a master’s and PhD. I started a podcast. I wrote three books. I worked as an editor for Plough. I got a job at King’s College London. And, reader, I got married. I think I could accurately describe the past decade (and the last five years in particular) as “dizzying.” As I catch my breath and survey my life from my still slightly packed but unfolding living room, I feel like I am standing on a whole new threshold or even set of thresholds.

This year I turn thirty. We are settling, as far as we can see, into London for good. And from these two facts, these two thresholds (thirties and settled), flow many considerations. I am figuring out how to befriend this city, learn some of its history, find its treasured corners, be in its confidence. I am wondering if I will ever feel like I belong in London, and if it matters if I do. I am thinking of what it looks like to make and keep friendships in a city. I am thinking of how to make our flat a home for the foreseeable future, a space good for writing, living, hosting, containing and nurturing whatever our life will hold. I am trying to figure out what my writing habits look like in this city, how to make use of my office at King’s College. I am thinking often of what will become of my writing, of the difficulty of maintaining creative writing and academic writing; sometimes letting them shape but not pollute each other, other times wondering if I will need to give up one to preserve the other. I am thinking about how this new chapter will shape me; a new landscape to live in, but also to live in me. Adding Covent Gardens and Greenwich to my already crowded interior landscape. And I am holding hopes, desires, and fears for things that I will hope will come to pass.

And I am in the last year of a postdoctoral research fellowship at King’s College London. A postdoctoral research fellowship is sort of like an academic apprenticeship: having completed your doctorate, you spend a few years publishing research and gaining professional experience with the aim of being prepared to apply for permanent jobs. Permanent jobs (think: tenure track) in academia are hard, almost impossible to get. The theological academic industry is fragile: departments are shrinking, redundancies abound, the future is uncertain. I am lucky to have made it this far. Something I think about is how hard I am willing to fight that battle for a permanent job, and if a permanent job is not in my future, how can the research I do now enrich other aspects of my writing. Will I pass the threshold into a permanent job— do I want to? Will I keep writing?

When faced with all these changes, my impulse is to write (an interesting impulse) about and through it all. I am writing about it, and I hope to share some of that writing here: about the making of a home, getting to know this city, finding writing habits, thinking about how Colorado and Britain have shaped me, about why I write, about turning thirty. In addition to all this, I also need to write. two book, to be preciser: one about death, and one about women in the Christian tradition. Perhaps I’ll write about writing (a funny idea) those as well.

So, my work is cut out for me: settling into London, home-making (literally), writing my book(s), thinking every once and a while about who and what I am becoming. Perhaps that is why I enjoyed that liminal airplane ride between 2024-2025, between where I come from and where I’m trying to belong now. A moment to breathe deep, to prepare, to exist on both and neither sides of the threshold.

But now I’m terra firma. The threshold crossed. Let’s begin.