Finding the "thin places"

29Apr
If I go up to the heavens, you are there,
  If I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
 if I settle on the far side of the sea,
 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.   
 -Psalm 139:8-10

A friend introduced me to the term “thin places”: places such as Iona and Lindisfarne where people especially sense the intersection of the spiritual and the material. While this is so, I believe the divine/God/the Holy Spirit always is with us, overlapping into our “every day” worlds but often is unrecognized. Every place, every day offers a “thin place”—if we are open to it. 


As the Catholic monk Thomas Merton put it: “We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through it all the time…God shows Himself everywhere, in everything—in people and in things and in nature and in events. It becomes very obvious that God is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without Him. It’s impossible. The only thing is that we don’t see it.”


There is much that is mysterious about this divine dimension in which, as Paul wrote: “…we live and move and have our being.”  However, we can try to be open to it, and with the Psalmist, have faith that “your hand will guide me, and your right hand will hold me fast.”


Musical Reflection - Gymnopédie No.1 - Erik Satie


Dear God, please help us to know your presence with us each day. Amen.

NatureEaster

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