God Is Close in a Thin Space

(Posted January 9, 2025)

We all know it too well this month of January in which we are already immersed. In our hearts we have tucked away the warm moments of Christmas, while we sweep up today’s pine needles and a broken ornament or two.

Looking for January’s Gift

And now we are faced with January.  How will we use the gift of this month? Where are those moments that will make us want to remember it? How do we look out across January’s grey cold bleakness, and feel the kind of thing that made December bearable?

Some years ago, when we could afford a trip abroad, Gary and I went to Ireland. It was there I learned how to receive the gift to find God in the bleakness. We went with our guide, Shane, out to the Burren -- a vast plain between two mountains that many geographers describe as looking like the rocky greyness of the Sinai wilderness. A fitting place, because our Celtic guide explained to us that he was hiking us to visit “A Thin Place.” Irish spirituality knows the thin places well.,

The Gift of ‘Thin Places’

Thin Places can be found if you look for them; sometimes they come to you.

• They can be an experience, or a natural location.
• You find thin places in the emotions of music,
• or in the words of a friend,
• or in the night sky.

‘Thin Place’ Defined

A thin place is where you feel -- you experience -- the closeness of God. It’s where you realize that God is shining through everything. That thin place experience plants in our hearts the awesome feeling of God.

When we speak of our “hearts,” it’s not a term for some contrived Valentine’s Day. When we say that an experience goes to our hearts, it means that it touches the very core of the true self that dwells in us all.

Unfortunately, most of us experiencing the winter of our daily lives are “too thick” to be able to see the thin places God peeking through.

God Is Close in a Thin Place

That day Shane hiked us for some four hours across the Burren to a quiet place where there was a Holy Well. It was considered holy long before Christian monks followed the people there. This is a place where one dips a tiny piece of cloth in its healing waters and apply it to the place in you that needs to heal. When you are there, you can feel how close God really is.

Finding a Thin Place

For this month of January, with the help of Jim Moriarty, our choir and soloists -- and the use of moving prayer -- I’m going to help show you where the thin places are. The late Marcus Borg said, “God is not somewhere else, but right here.” God isn’t some distant concept, but God is right HERE, in January. God is hidden, right here, in that feeling that forms in our hearts when the music touches us.

I hope you’ll join us this Sunday for our first exploration of the thin place that’s waiting for you.