It was a cold, clear spring day in the Owyhee Mountains about 60 years ago. I needed a break from classes and this Saturday morning provided an opportunity. Frost was on the ground and patches of snow in the shade of the rocks. As I rounded a corner, to my right the craggy outcropping of the rocks created a cave-like space that caught the heat of the early spring sun on this cold crisp morning. To my surprise, a beautiful patch of wildflowers filled the space with a butterfly sipping nectar! It was a holy moment that I needed that day. It was one of those “thin places” in life.
What are “thin places”? You may recall my introduction to “thin places” in Creation’s Corner #12. Theologically speaking, they are moments when heaven and earth collide – moments when one is caught between eternity past and eternity future where God’s presence becomes so real that time seems to stop. Mary DeMuth, in her book, Thin Places, describes such moments as “a piece of vellum, where we see a holy glimpse of the eternal…. Thin places are snatches of holy ground, tucked into the corners of our world, where, if we pay very close attention, we might just catch a glimpse of eternity.”
Tomas Edward Brown in his poem, My Garden, catches a glimpse of a thin place. Hanging above my desk at home is a copy of this poem slightly modified by my father, Don Sheldon. Dad was a world-class hand engraver and poet in his own right. He gave this as a gift to my mother. My father knew thin places:
A GARDEN is a lovesome thing, God wot!
Rose plot,
Fringed pool,
Fern’d grot–
The veriest school
Of peace; and yet the fool
Contents that God is not-
Not God! In gardens! When the eve is cool?
Nay, but I have a sign;
‘Tis very sure God walks in mine.
Moses encountered God in the burning bush in the wilderness of Mount Horeb! Elizabeth Barrett Browning in Aurora Leigh described it like this:
…Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes.…
Alfred Lord Tennyson beautifully describes his thin place in his poem Flower in the Crannied Wall:
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you there, root and all in my hand,
Little flower – but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
Gerard Manley Hopkins describes the world as “charged with the grandeur of God.” Eugene Peterson warns us to avoid the danger of “habitual indifference to the glory of a dogwood in blossom.”
When you sense the glory of God in God’s earthly temple, how do you respond? I recommend that you bask daily in God’s glory and be sure to thank Him for the gift of thin places!
Our Prayer – Lord God, may we daily sense your presence. You have filled Creation with a banquet table of reminders – sunrises, sunsets, rainbows, flowers, and your love flowing like a river! Help us, Lord, that each of our days may be a blessing to you.
Thanks for listening.
— Joe Sheldon
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