Looking Through a Thin Place, April 22, 2004

I started yesterday (04-21-04) with the intention of spending three days with God, but my mind and heart are still cluttered with looking for answers instead of looking for God, even if it is God’s answers I am looking for. I am preoccupied with what to do instead of who to be or how to be.

I did get a taste of being with God as I watched the sunset and the stars come out last night. Lying on my back by the lake I saw a bank of grey clouds divide a deepening blue sky overhead with a crescent moon, just days away from new, with a bright planet. They were bright and clear in the sky before any stars were visible. Below the cloud the sky was luminous, pearlescent – white just the below the cloud blending to a coral or peach pink toward the horizon. In contrast to the crisp sharp moon and planet in the deepening blue sky, the pearlescent pink was unfocused. The blue above, with moon and planet, seemed to be a defined plane, approachable, tangible. But the pearlescent pink below seemed mysterious, elusive, distant, unattainable, infinite. It drew me toward eternity. I though about the images of passing into eternity in the books Peace Like a River and Crested Butte. Fathers and sons together – a processional over a ridge where the son is sent back – the father reaches across a stream in a cave to welcome the son in.

The pearlescent pink sky was drawing me in. As the bank of cloud drifted east and the moon and planet settled west, at one point the bank of cloud separated moon and planet. The pink was beginning to lose its luminescence, and the crescent moon’s sharp edges and points invaded and disrupted the haziness of the pink. With moon on one side and planet on the other, the mysteriousness was punctured and soon the pink melted into grey that merged into the blue that had now deepened into black, with stars glistening through. The cloud bank had drifted away and isolated clouds dodged among the stars. I was sent back.

I remembered walking with a friend in Mckemmie Woods, Virginia in 1997 watching the Hale-Bopp comet and discussing the heightened awareness we have of God in the transitions and seams of life, like dawn and dusk. I read in Phil Yancey’s Rumors of Another World of the “thin spots” between this world and God’s eternity. I reflected on the Orthodox understanding of icons as windows from or through which we catch a glimpse of eternity.

Last night’s sunset was surly such a thin spot – an icon – into eternity. I sure it could all be explained with meteorology and optics – physics and chemistry – but with spiritual eyes on an intentional awareness of God gracing me/us with his presence, I got a glimpse of eternity. That the far more to the point that answers to my uncertainties about my can and the path immediately ahead of me.

Looking Through a Thin Place - An Advent Icon

As I was preparing for my worship message for the first Sunday of Advent 2009, I remembered experiencing a thin place on my January 14, 2009 silent retreat at Disciples Crossing in Athens, Texas. Including that in my worship message would be extraneous and distracting (not to mention making it too long), but I do think it might be of interest if not of value to some folk. Here is the excerpt from my November 29 worship message that prompted me to decide to post my journal entry.

English teacher and writer Leonard Beechy tells how in the year before his mother died she heard her father call to her during the night. She said his voice was so clear that she answered and struggled to get up. She spent her final year in a twilight that blended past and present. He wondered if she heard her father call again during that quiet December night when she died. Often when people come to the threshold between this life and the next they are suspended in a thin place where they get a glimpse of eternity. (Christian Century, November 17, 2009, p. 21) We can think of Advent as a thin place in the year in which we are suspended between the past and eternity, catching a glimpse of God’s hope for humanity.

Celtic spirituality, both Christian and pre- Christian, speaks of twilight time, the time between the times, the enchanted moments at dawn and dusk when the veil between this world and the world beyond is thin.

We western Protestants don’t understand Eastern Orthodox icons very well, thinking of them in terms of worshipping images. However, they see icons as windows into eternity, thin places between us and God created by the prayers of the painter and the viewer.

Advent is a thin time, between autumn and winter, between Jesus’ first and second comings, when we may catch a glimpse of the shalom of the kingdom of priests. Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann writes that it “takes place between the clinging and the yearning.” In Advent the veil between worlds grows thin and the holy calls to us from the world to come. It is both the evening when we must relinquish what is dying that we cling to so we can open our hands to receive what is being born for which we are yearning.

Now here is my journal entry.

After a contemplative walk around the lake in the afternoon, I sat on a bench by the lake shore from 4:30 to 5:00 pm for centering prayer. Upon arousing, I realize the sun was almost at the horizon and that a chill with coming with the wind and shadow. I returned to the cabin to dress warmly and to get cushions for comfort and warmth on the bench. I sat facing southeast as the sun sunk below the horizon and the shadow crept across the lake and up the trees. I watched for the lighted cross on the other side of the lake to illuminate and soon realized the lights were on and the illumination of the cross would appear gradually as the sky and wood darkened. I remained in contemplative mode as the stars very slowly emerged in the darkening sky. First was a star directly above the cross, not much higher than the tree line. Then another star a ways to the left the same distance above the horizon. Then three fainter stars, on atop the other, in a vertical line almost exactly bisecting a horizontal between the two first stars. Little by little I became aware I was looking at Orion and the whole constellation came into focus as the sky filled with stars. I sat contemplating the grandeur until the chill drove me in at about 7:15 pm. I had some thought that the moon might also appear, but I never saw it.

In that contemplative silence of a little over two and a half hours (with a brief interruption to dress for the chill), I had a sense of experiencing “waiting on the Lord.” At every moment all appeared static, motionless. Yet I was aware of the changes – first as the shadow crossed the lake and climbed the trees, then as the glow of the cross emerged, then as I could perceive the stars and recognize Orion, and finally as I knew the stars were moving. (I know it was the earth’s rotation, but fussing over mechanics misses the point.) By the time I returned to the cabin, the star of Orion’s foot that had been above the cross was now so far to right that Orion’s belt (three vertical stars) were even a bit to the right of the cross and no longer just above the tree line but well up in the sky with many stars between Orion and the horizon.

It all happened so imperceptibly and yet with such definitive force. Even when nothing seemed to be happening, the changes came. On my afternoon contemplative walk, paying attention to my steps was a rhythm outside my awareness of God. My centering prayer stayed forced and the half hour passed almost instantaneously. The interruption to dress for warmth shifted my focus from God to my body, and watching through the descent of dark at first seem to bring my attention to lake, trees, cross, sky, stars. But by the time my chilled body called me away I know I have been with God in the silence and descending dark.

The Psalmist (75:2) gives thanks to God for the exaltation of the righteous, even while the wicked boast, confident that God has appointed a time.

Praying for discernment and re-emerging of Central Christian Church also call for a thankful confidence that God has appointed a time even while the changes we wait for seem so long in coming. When God says, “wait for me,” God does not mean not to work, but to work faithfully following the discerned path toward re-emerging, even when that changes seem as gradual as the appearance of the stars at dusk.

Psalm 105:12 reminds us that we, too, are few and sojourners, of little account, yet called to be the prophets who speak so the voice of God can be heard.

Four centuries in Egypt surely seemed endless – no perceptible act of God. Forty years in the Wilderness dragged on and on and most who left Egypt did not enter the Promised Land, and those who did had been children when they left Egypt.

The cloud and fire of God’s presence led them, not with a disclosed plan but with a daily call to faith.

Psalm 135:15-18 remind us that the idols we make cannot speak the voice of God. Beware lest the plans we make clog up hearing from God in the silence of his intimate presence! (Psalm 135:2-3)

As a congregation we’re praying for discernment, hoping – expecting – believing God will speak. I’ve gone into silence for three days to listen for the voice of God. Sometimes when God finally speaks the message is painful, as is clear in 1 Samuel 3:1,11,17-18.

It seems that Eli knew that God had harsh words for him. When he recognizes and confirms that they are the words of the Lord, he does not resist or protest but relinquishes and submits, knowing that what seems best to God is what is really best.

So as we pray for discernment, we want God to tell us how Central Christian Church can re-emerge with vigor and grow in the twenty-first century. What if God has a painful message for us?

In verse 3 Samuel seems to be sleeping in the Holy Place, perhaps in front of the curtain separating the Holy of Holies. The Tabernacle seems to have been somewhat converted from a tent but not yet a temple as Solomon built, perhaps a little like the Tabernacle model made by the Mennonites in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Was Samuel acting as a sort of night watchmen? Was he doing Eli’s priestly duties now that Eli was blind and his sons not serving as faithful priests? Here is someone dwelling in the dwelling place of God (Psalm 48:1-2; 15:1-2). With the lamp still burning, the sign/light of God’s presence was there as God spoke, perhaps from behind the curtain that hid the Ark of the Covenant?

In verse 11, the Spanish Version Popular has “dolerán” (hurt or pain as a verb , grief or sadness as noun) where many English translations have “tingle.” The New Living Bible has “do something shocking” and The Message has “shake everyone up and get their attention.”

Verse 21 prompts me to pray, “O Lord, continue to speak, that we may have you Word as we proceed. May your voice be heard through the words I speak to this congregation.