I feel God in the stillness. In the silence, I hear him speak, sometimes in a whisper, but always deep within. A voice that transcends my senses. At times, it is frightening, but also comforting somehow.
Thin places: where the veil between this world and the divine is thin and the sacred becomes present.
I felt God’s presence, as a child, when lying on the grass and looking at the sky through the branches of the oak tree in our backyard. It felt like the heaven I imagined, clouds of comfort and safety hugging my soul.
As an adult, I again felt that divine presence when gazing at the clouds through the trees at our cabin in the Pennsylvania woods. A sense of peace radiated from within. Now, when I need calm, I go to the cabin in the woods in my mind’s eye. Through the tree branches, the heaven opens and I can feel a spiritual presence.
Thin places: that holy place we can go to in our mind’s eye and part the veil and transcend the ordinary. A refuge.
I felt that divine presence as I stood in the expansiveness of the prayer hall of the Mesquita of Cordoba. As I gazed on the ethereal lightness created by red and white arches resting on tall columns of marble, onyx, jasper and granite, I felt myself being lifted to a world of the infinite and unknowable.
Despite humankind’s intentional intersection of Islam and Christianity in this edifice, its sacred essence defied any human understanding. I felt dwarfed by this awareness; disoriented by this knowledge, but grounded in a greater truth. God is too large for our earthly boxes, and I and all who stand here are just solitary pieces in the force of his universe.
Thin places: where we often feel small, but part of something larger than our human perception.
I felt God’s presence on an empty beach, looking out over the ocean as the surf thundered onto the sand.
On the misty horizon, water and sky melt into each other, and I am drawn into a Narnian dimension where truth abides. In Azlan’s thundering roar, there is a naked vulnerability of raw and often hard-to-face truth, but also total acceptance and grace. A deeply spiritual release.
Thin places: where the voice of God shakes us out of our complacency, filling us with the strength to hold on or the wisdom and courage to let go.
I felt the expectation of the divine as I walked upward towards the gleaming white domed edifice of Sacre-Coeur. The magnificent artistry of this manmade monument to God threatened to overwhelm my senses.
I sat down, my eyes gazing up at the coloured mosaics and the representation of the Sacred Heart. Sunlight filtered through a cupola, casting a mystical pallor. The voices of the choir wafting through the sanctuary entered my awareness. I was transported from a simple cognitive appreciation of humankind’s creation to a deeply personal space.
There are no adequate words in this inner world of contemplation, but I felt a sense of awe and wonder, a peacefulness that connected me to what is holy.
Thin places: where we stop on our earthly pilgrimage to contemplate and wonder what lies beyond the mundane and reflect on the possibility of the extraordinary.
I felt the stirring of the mystics as I climbed the Chimney Rock trail at Ghost Ranch, in Georgia O’Keeffe country. Standing under the light of the southwest sun, silently viewing the vividly coloured red rock walls and tabletop mesas, with the wind breathing on my face, I took in the beauty and vastness of this desert landscape.
I inhaled deeply, allowing it to feed my soul. In the stillness, God tiptoed in. I felt alone, but connected to God’s handiwork. Significant, but simultaneously insignificant. A place of renewal and transformation.
Thin places have no hard and fast geography. They are not found on a GPS. Thin places are where the diaphanous veil between this world and the eternal world is permeable. Theologian Marcus Borg describes these as a place where God feels near, where we know him in our bones, where God is both deep inside and all around. Thin places—where we are still, and our heart is opened to the sacred.
