My grandfather, John Fitzgibbon, was proud of being Irish. His joke was that the family name meant “son of a tailless monkey”. We laugh about it but the actual truth is that this is how Irish people were depicted in the 1800s. From that Irish heritage, however, is an understanding of what the Celtic Christians referred to as “the thin places”. These were always places where God and people met, where one or the other broke through into experience.
In his book, The Heart of Christianity, Marcus Borg made the important point that worship is intended to create a “thin place”, a deep sense of the Sacred. I like this idea, that worship is about opening a place, a portal if you will, through which the Light of Grace can shine upon us and we can bask in that deep and abiding love.
I never really thought of it that way, but it fits. And, it does not have to be in a church. For Thomas Merton, it was a street corner in downtown Louisville, Kentucky. For me, it has been a few places, one a very beautiful valley, north of the town of Cong, in Ireland, on a misty day. Here is my point, where is your thin place? Where has it been?
What is more, here are two challenges: make where you worship a thin place and become a thin place for others. I am asked often why I garden, landscape, build decks and love flowers. I have subconsciously known this answer: I am creating a thin place for me, my family and anyone who wants to come to visit. I tell people who come to work on the house or who are neighbors that they are welcome to come and sit on the deck, they don’t need permission, just come on. I also tell them if I see them there, I will know they needed a moment, a thin place where they have to be nothing but present.
TMM