Thin Places

"At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of god descending like a dove and alighting on him." Matthew 3:16

There are places where the veil between the spiritual and the physical is exceptionally thin.

"Thin places, the Celts call this space,

Both seen and unseen,

Where the door between the world

And the next is cracked open for a moment

And the light is not all on the other side.

God shaped space. Holy." (Sharlande Sledge)

Influenced by their native spiritual sensibilities, Celtic Christians adopted this term to capture their belief that some places, times, and experiences seem especially holy.

I have always been fascinated by the history and culture of the British Isles, the Celts in particular. Nonsense about Celtic Christian spirituality can be found all over the internet. But medieval Celtic Christians truly did have a special feel for nature, a passion for the one who is Lord over it, and a belief that He meets people in special places. Ever since the idea of thin places was concretized in my mind, I have been captivated by the notion.

Such places abound in scripture - Moses standing on Holy Ground, Jacob's struggle with the Lord, the transfiguration. Sometimes God breaks through our mundane lives and in a mind-blowing moment we find ourselves face-to-face with the Almighty.

While I believe that God is over all and through all and in all, I also believe that there are times and places in which our sensitivity to the presence of God is enhanced. These are Thin Places.

This blog will be the musings of someone searching for Thin Places in everyday life. I will strive to identify those moments when the sacred and the profane meet, those places where the everyday and the holy become tangibly one. However, it will also serve as a confession of those times when the veil seems exceptionally thick and reflections on my ordinary, everday life when it seems to be just that - ordinary.