Thin Places

By Kathryn Saunders

My Mother loved words. That love is one of the greatest legacies I received from her. Church is full of exotic words and phrases: fun, interesting and sometimes very meaningful. Narthex*, lavabo**, “thin places”. That phrase – thin places – speaks to my heart. 

"Thin places" is Celtic Christian term for places where the distance between heaven and Earth is reduced or, in more secular terms, where we experience a feeling of being out-of-the-world, a closeness to something “other”. Googling tells me the old Celtic saying is, “heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in the thin places that distance is even smaller”. 

I have friends, many here at Christ Church, who can share very vivid and specific encounters with the divine. But my experiences are more an “almost”, a tingling, a warmth like the awareness of a loved one standing behind me, a sense of closeness…but just out of reach. And I’ve found them in my “thin places”.

The thin place I’m writing from is a New Hampshire lakefront among pine trees where the scent of sun on small, soft, (New England-style) pine needles, wind in the branches of tall pines and the gentle lapping of clear water can capture and call me with all the beauty of creation to “be still and know that I am God”. (And you wonder why I make the long trip each summer?)

My thin places are also of human origin. Though I’m a sceptic by nature about locations “historically thought to be the site of”, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem is, for me, both holy and “thin” through the yearning and love of millions upon millions of faithful seeking to come closer to God there. Despite the crowds. Despite what we know about disagreements between the various denominations with chapels within it, it brings an inner silence, a shortness of breath, a difference. And Gethsemane (among the olive trees - not in the churches). Jesus walked and prayed there: certainly enough to make it thin.

Closer to home, I suspect I share with many of you the sense of our historic church as a thin place. We feel it on Sunday…or any day, especially when it’s quiet and sometimes when it’s full of joyful music. When I serve as a docent, I can see it on the faces of many of our visitors.  

In all these places, I’m not sure if heaven is closer, but I know I feel a greater awareness of God’s presence within me, in those around me and in this amazing world. 

My thin places are not everyone’s. My mother and I shared a love of words but her thin places were different than mine: the edge of the ocean, looking deep into the petals of a beautiful flower. Lovely to me, indeed – but “thick”, not thin. Like beauty, perhaps thin places are known only in the eye of the beholder.

Whatever or wherever they may be for each of us, thin places are worth knowing. May we all find the thin places in our lives. 

*Narthex: term commonly used today for the entryway to a church

**Lavabo: the small pitcher and bowl used for handwashing at the Eucharist