between heaven and a thin place

Full moon setting beautifully over the Gulf of Mexico to the west lights up the whole place, and because the oven clock hasn’t been set back I thought three o’clock was my perfect rising hour of four a.m. But it’s four now and a lovely morning for continuing life. 

Who heard last Sunday’s sermon will understand that this in-and-with darkness, moon lighting up the ocean, sound of the sea can be a thin place but also that place is less geographical than sensory and moment, of the moment. Although geography can rekindle a moment. A word is kairos. Sacred time, holy moment. A hundred daffodils gracing an Altar. Serving the chalice in an enormous auditorium as hundreds of Christians raise hands into the air and thunder “and I will rai-aise Him up” at a charismatic renewal conference in the Carolina mountains. Spirit-filled worship at the Sesquicentennial Celebration of a historic Florida Gulf Coast church where the walls were called “prayer-soaked” and it was so. Watching a groundhog watch me watch him watching me at a quiet, lone spot beside the Susquehanna River the morning after leaving the love of my life at her college and knowing a page turning moment had changed my life forever. And I had to be alone to deal, just me and the river running by like my life, and the woodchuck. Other moments with other children, both mine and God’s. “What’s for snack today, Father Tom?” Narnia. Gandalf arriving in Hobbiton. The kairos of taking refuge at MLP after the death of a loved one. Sitting with my mother, just me alone waiting on a drizzly Sunday morning in July as a nurses aid expressing condolences says “You must be her Bubba.” Peering through the window of the garage out back, at a car I never got to drive and the garage door is no longer ajar. Sitting in a swing and staring at a sign “Patty’s Garden.” Times and moments and thin places too private to share but not to summon. 

Full moon sets into the sea on a morning of life as the east pinkens for another Thursday.

W in thin places