The Threshold of Belonging

Rabia al-Adawiyya lived much of her life at thresholds: between private devotion and public witness, between ecstatic experience and daily survival, between the material and spiritual worlds. She dwelt in the gaps and margins. For diaspora populations, thresholds are literal and metaphorical: borders crossed, neighborhoods newly inhabited, religious communities joined, diaspora churches or mosques entered. Found families often first recognize each other at thresholds—at the edge of a religious gathering, at a community meal, in hallways of shared housing, at transit stations. These liminal spaces hold special power because they exist between worlds, neither fully the homeland nor fully assimilated into the new country. Rabia's practice of dwelling at thresholds suggests that found family is constructed precisely in these spaces of in-betweenness rather than in settled, established institutions. The framework helps diaspora members understand that their perpetual positioning between worlds is not temporary displacement but actual condition where belonging is forged. Threshold practice involves conscious attention to these liminal spaces, treating them as sacred sites of recognition and kinship-building rather than spaces of anxiety or exclusion.