Contemplating a Thin Place in the Sunset Clouds

Tonight I sat on our porch swing contemplatively watching the sunset. Almost no breeze moved the leaves on the trees, and the clouds seemed not to move, even as the light from the setting sun changed their appearance. I know the science of the low setting sun shining on the bottoms of the clouds making them appear to be sort of roof extending toward the horizon, but the thin gap under the cloud roof before the more distant, less glowing clouds seemed to be a window, not to the sky but a glimpse of a reality beyond the sky, reminiscent of the Christian Celtic understanding of "thin places" where the temporal and eternal come close enough to offer a tantalizing look into the other side. I took another picture when the street light came on and the clouds had grayed, closing the window for the night. As Psalm 108:4 says to God, "Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds."

I am aware that "thin places" were a part of pre-Christian Celtic culture, but I think they have shared it with all of us who long for intimacy with Jesus. Sacraments similarly allow we who are physical creatures to participate in profound spiritual reality. To me, Zwingli's "bare symbols" are inadequate, and changing of the physical substance obscures the real mystery involved. The Easter Orthodox understanding of icons are not pictures to look at but windows, thin places if you will, that invite us to look beyond the temporal into the eternal. I believe many more "icons" work this way even if not officially labeled as icons. After 53 amazing years of marriage. I would have to say that in this sense, for me our relationship has been both sacramental and iconic. We have been able to see past each other glimpses of Christ's covenant love for the community of faith, the Church, and to participate in it together.

My sense is that we get in trouble when we try to reduce sacred mysteries to rational, human, logic. We start thinking that we are capable of that and then our explanations become substitutes for the holy and we fight with each other over our limited explanations instead of embracing the mystery in awe and wonder.

Watching when the street lamp came on took me back to my early childhood. I remember kneeling on the couch in my grandparents' apartment on Park Blvd in Oakland, CA to watch the lights come on. I remember having Robert Louis Stevenson's poem "The Lamplighter" read to me. I associated it with watching the street lights come on (and I still do). My grandfather died and my grandmother moved in with us when I was five years old, so this is clearly a very early embedded memory. Even though lamplighters were obsolete long before I watched the street lamps from my grandparents' couch, that poem touched something deep in my heart that is still there. So here it is for whatever it may evoke for others. 

My tea is nearly ready and the sun has left the sky;

It’s time to take the window to see Leerie going by;

For every night at teatime and before you take your seat,

With lantern and with ladder he comes posting up the street.

Now Tom would be a driver and Maria go to sea,

And my papa’s a banker and as rich as he can be;

But I, when I am stronger and can choose what I’m to do,

Oh Leerie, I’ll go round at night and light the lamps with you!

For we are very lucky, with a lamp before the door,

And Leerie stops to light it as he lights so many more;

And O! before you hurry by with ladder and with light,

O Leerie, see a little child and nod to him tonight!