Thin Place

By Pastor Paul Gauche

Today’s Word(s): Thin Place as in… those experiences where the distance between heaven and earth nearly touches. Surprisingly, we might experience this more than we realize. Still, it’s a challenge to describe.

Rooted deeply in the Celtic tradition, a “thin place” or “thin space” is where the veil between what we imagine as heaven and what we know as the earth is nearly transparent. They are close together. It’s where we experience a deep sense of God’s presence in our everyday world. A thin place, then, is where the spirited world and the natural world intersect briefly, like a kiss.

You get this, don’t you?

It’s that moment when your 6-year-old granddaughter looks at you and says, “I love you…”

You experience it when you watch the sun rise over a mountain or the sun set into the ocean. It’s what you experience when you walk into a bakery, and the aroma of bread fresh from the oven is a little dizzying.

You experience it when you put that spoonful of tomato basil soup in your mouth and close your eyes as you swallow. It’s what you experience when you touch a loved one, or your loved one touches you, and you think this is absolutely Divine because it is.

There are moments when we experience God, Spirit, the Sacred, the Divine leaning into our world, our space, into us. That is a Thin Place. This experience is more than cognitive, intellectual knowing. It’s an experience of what we might call spirited knowing, something we may feel ‘deep inside.’

The ancient scriptures are filled with stories of the natural world and the spirited world merging into a thin line. Thanks to our Celtic Christian sisters and brothers, we have this beautiful phrase “thin place.”

When we experience Thin Places, we might say something like “Wow,” “Whoa,” or “Amen.”

Or, more likely, we probably wouldn’t say anything at all.

Thriving Reflections:

++ Describe an experience you’ve had with Thin Space.

++ What does this experience have to teach you?

++ How does an experience of ‘thin space’ help you thrive?

#100days50words

#Thriv’ëra

Paul Gauche is the Pastor of Life Transitions at Prince of Peace. His posts are part of his #100days50words project, where he blogs about a different word each week. You can follow his project on Instagram (@pgauche) or his blog, Thriving Rhythms.