As a preteen a wonderful opportunity opened before me. It was created by a heart attack. My paternal grandfather needed to alter his life both in diet and by walking three miles every morning. I do not remember how it began but I realized quickly that if I was willing to rise by 5:30, I could walk with him. He would wake me and off we would go. This was as sacred a time as I had ever known. This gentle, strong, so easy to love man would be mine for an hour and I would be his. We spoke off everything and nothing. The world's beauty opened before me as he helped me notice it. God came up in simple earth revealing ways. I could open my questions, wonderments, hurts, hope. I do not remember him as profound. I remember him as listening and wise. I remember the world as loving and grounded and for an hour, ours. I felt so enveloped by goodness, hope, what we call love and by an honest faith.
My friend and colleague Everett Thomas speaks of thin places from the Celtic tradition. These are places where the two worlds mingle, where the distance between the worlds gives way to communication, this mingling. People harken to them seeking the connection. The connection is deeper than we often find in life. That is another way to see my time with Granddad as we walked Lake Boon Trail. Most often we think of thin places as geographic, particular. I would later find those to be the Chapel of Holy Trinity Church, Greensboro, NC particularly as the sun set in Lent or in the dark of night after time with friends. There was the rock jetty in Oriental far from others' easy reach that was a place of God's passing. There is always the sea.
In 1931 Mahatma Gandhi in his Message to the World said, "There is an indefinable mysterious power that pervades everything. I feel it though I do not see it. It is this unseen power that makes itself felt though and yet defies all proof because it is so unlike all that I perceive through my senses. It transcends the senses."
Truth abides in thin places, naked raw hard to face truth, yet the comfort, safety and strength to face that truth also abide there. There is something healing in this truth found. Thin places find us often, though we can deliberately seek them and we know them and find ourselves known.
That is how I understand the dynamic in First Samuel today. The boy Samuel and Eli sleep near each other, Eli in his chamber and Samuel in the Temple near the holy Ark of God. It was a time when the crossover between the worlds was not revealed often in visions or God's voice heard. Yet on this night God is heard thrice, "Samuel, Samuel." The boy can make no sense of it without Eli.
"Eli said to Samuel, 'Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, 'Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.'" Samuel 3:8-9
Yet the voice is for the boy to hear, not the old man. In the voice is the hard truth that Eli's time of service and that of his linage will soon be expiated from this holy place, this thin place, this Temple. Reluctantly, desiring not to hurt Eli, the boy Samuel will share the vision at Eli's insistence.
Then wonder of wonders, Eli says to Samuel, "It is the LORD; let him do what seems good to him." I Samuel 3:18.
In this thin place is not only the truth heard, but the strength to accept it, to grow in its light is found. Thus Samuel grows into the prophet of Israel and God's word is better heard and comprehended. The thin place is the Temple but also the relationship with Eli who has lost the vision but held the hope that once again God will speak into the heart of life with truth heard, accepted, built upon.
Thin places can be intentionally created upon a worthy foundation. That is one way to understand the reading from Acts.
They (this early baptized community in Jerusalem) devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. Acts 2:42-47.
Here was an intentional thin place where all fed on God's Word in teaching and Eucharist, prayer and fellowship. So thin was it that they held all in common and aided any among them in need. The truth of being the beloved of God shaped them deeply.
In the Gospel, Jesus notes that the Temple, holy and thin as it may be, will fall. The hearing of God may fail there. The world will go into its next chaotic convulsion about man's power, war. Persecutions will happen. This will be the arena where your faith will find articulation. No need to prepare, rather be a thin place, endure in the surety of God's care, this thin place of heart/mind. Here you will connect the worlds and gain your very soul.
So what would they do? Run to and fro? No, we hear of them in Acts:
They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common...
Thin places are a given. Sometimes they are geographic. Sometimes they are the places we create as we yield to an openness to God, as we break the bread and say the prayers and hope to hear and share our lives either on Lake Boon Trail or in some church or youth retreat or jail. Anywhere where we yield to the "indefinable mysterious power that pervades everything."
Thank you Granddad.
Thank you Granddad.
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