Thin Places

So, what is it about gratitude? What is it Mrs. Simpson introduced to our spiritual life? The suggestion is but a beginning to a deeper and more intimate life with God yet frightening because of the implications to an ever-present desire to remain where we are.

God calls His children to movement. If our moment of belief is like standing on a dock waiting to board a ship that will set sail on the open and uncharted sea to some unknown destination, the dock is the safest point on the journey. The dock offers firm footing, and there, we know where we are. Yet, when we board the ship, so much unknown awaits. The dock offers safety while the journey ahead risks storms and high seas. This is every moment of the Christian life, no matter where we are on our journey, we confront the decision to remain or to board.

“Now the Presence of the Lord appeared in the sight of the Israelites as a consuming fire on top of the mountain” (Exodus 24:17; JPS).

This consuming fire is what we fear. For in giving ourself to God, we relinquish the self as we wish it to be, safety in a world of tools and utility, of objectiveness and objectifying, of falsity and false values, of “tilting at windmills.” So consumed by Him, we enter into the intimate life, into inexpressible community and generosity, a sacrifice of “relinquishing and giving” to use Avivah Zornberg’s words.

Lent is here. There is in the remembrance that sense of movement to which we are called. Within this remembrance, perhaps underlying our devotion is what Celtic Christians called “thin places.” Thin places go beyond experiencing God on a mountaintop or beneath a vast universe of stars or listening to the lapping waves while gazing across the ocean toward the setting sun in awe of unimaginable hues. A thin place is where the veil of falsity is lifted and our soul is bare before God. In her sermon, Reverend Amber Clark writes, “This is the beauty of Ash Wednesday, because right here in this place grace finds us.” All that is left to us in the thin place is admittance in its raw form, exposed before God, consumed by His fire.

In the thin place, we chance becoming as God is becoming—Ehyeh asher Ehyeh—I shall become what I shall become or in other translations, I Am Who I Am, God’s name. There is in His presence, His claiming us in the consuming fire that is His love, a resonance to which we become enthralled with where He is taking us.

Once experienced, the thin place allows us to return to the world’s reality and meet our neighbor with a shared sense of who we both are and who created us without an I am better than you or I am as good as you or I am glad I am not like you pretense.

This is the end of gratitude, to know who we are, what we are, where we are, and what we chance becoming.