Thin Places

         There is a phrase that the "religious" folk I know use to describe places where one encounters the Divine.  We refer to them as "thin" places: places where the barrier between this world and something more sacred, more spiritual, more mystical becomes thin.  These are places where you can feel God, whatever it is that God means to you, where you can touch something beyond this world, where the presence of the holy becomes almost tangible.  There are specific places around the world that are often described as these thin places, places where the Divine seems to hover, play, reach down to us, or simply to be more accessible.  Four of the thin places I have visited are Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, Zephyr Point in Lake Tahoe, Iona in Scotland, and Asilomar Beach near Monterey, though there are many other such places.  These are enchanting, almost magical areas where the beauty of nature seems to stretch out forever.  When you are in these places, you feel the ruach, or Spirit through every single breathe you take. There is a sense that time stops, or moves differently, while you are there: clocks have no meaning and the only thing that is important is being, is existing, is breathing.  In each of these places it feels that you not only see and breathe beauty, but you become part of it.  There is a thinness not just between the sacred and mundane, but between yourself and all creation.  It is easier to understand at these sites that everything really is just ONE and that you are a small part and yet an essential part of the rhythm and movement of life, of love, of existence, of being.
        Perhaps it is harder to feel this amidst the craziness of the cities and suburbs where many of us live.  When people are rude, angry or unkind and you have to watch with an incredibly alert eye driving around because of the craziness of those who are focused solely on their own needs, their own schedules, their own desires and worries in this life, it is harder to open yourself to connection with all things.  I shrink from taking down the wall between myself and those who cannot see me as anything but a barrier, an unfortunate obstacle on their path to rush to wherever they are going next.  Being open in those moments means being vulnerable to another's anger and angst and that is uncomfortable, to say the least.  It is harder to maintain a strong sense of the presence of God in the face of so much busyness that tends to have greedy and self-serving aspects to it.  
        But this weekend I found myself reflecting that "thin places" are not just physical places where we might go.  I attended a concert Saturday evening where a piece was performed that was so incredibly beautiful that I found tears running down my face before I was even aware of it.  I was moved beyond myself and into that place of "thinness" where I wanted to literally be part of the music, where I was enveloped in something beyond this world, where I was transported beyond the journey we walk and into the Presence in which we live.  Recently someone told me about a sunset she had seen that was so beautiful that she wept because she wanted to be in the sunset, to be enveloped in its beauty beyond just the visual experience of seeing it.  Each of our senses can bring us into that place of thinness: the song of a bird, the beauty of a forest, the smell of the mountains, an unexpected and wondrous taste, the ocean waves lapping against our feet: all of these can bring us into a sense of the eternal, into a deep connection with all that is awe-some and profoundly lovely, into a timeless place of pure being.  Experiencing or witnessing acts of kindness can also move us into those places of realizing there is good, that we are surrounded by something that encourages generosity, care, openness and love when we are open to it.
        As the piece of music that touched and deepened in me as a "thin place" came to a conclusion, I glanced around me at the other people attending the concert.  While many appreciated the music, not all had been moved in the same way.  Not everyone in that space had encountered the Divine, a transcendent moving, a connection to the beyond.  And I realized that thin places are not universally so.  When I was on Iona, those we travelled with did not experience it in the same way.  It was "very nice" but not transformational for everyone, as it had been for me.  When I am at Lake Tahoe, I have heard people snipping at their children or complaining about their lodgings: for them, too, that place may be a nice place to visit, but it does not always refresh, reform and renew in the way it does for me.
         The truth is that encountering a thin place is much more about how we stand in any particular moment.  We have met people who radiate "holiness," for lack of a better term.  These are people (like the Dalai Lama, Father Chacour, Maya Angelou, Ben Weir, Mr. Rogers) who, when you stand in their presence your breathing changes.  You slow yourself and are present despite whatever else is going on with you.  They call this out of us because of their stance in this life.  They see the holy that is there around them all the time.  They live in the wonder of the transcendent, and they are unafraid of the vulnerability of being open to the reality of our deep connection and unity to everything around us.  They create thin places around them for all of us who encounter them simply by standing in that thinness themselves.
        And the thing is, this is a stance that all of us can cultivate.  It takes intentionality, a willingness to be open to seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling and experiencing where God is in any one moment.  It requires breathing differently, moving with purpose rather than rushing around, taking time to not be human doings but to be human beings.  But, as we see with the people and places who are "thin" around us, when one is willing and able to do that, it is not just a gift to the persons being in that Divine presence, it is a gift to all around them too: one person's stance can cause others to also breathe differently, to move, hear, see, and experience our world differently.
       I am grateful for thin places, both physical places and the thin places that are created by art, by beauty, by kindness, and by courage.

God in Charge??

         I've written on this before, but it has come up again, so here we are once more.  There are a few very basic and very different theologies that compete with one another around the topic of omnipotence, control or total power.  These theologies do not divide across denominational lines: Christians (and really people of every faith) of every denomination argue on both sides of this issue.  But it comes down to the same thing.  Frederick Buechner (Protestant), Richard Rohr (Catholic), Elie Weisel (Jewish)... they all basically say the same thing: that there are three statements that cannot be reconciled:
God is all-powerful.
God is all-good.
Terrible things happen.
         One of these has to go.
         If God is both all good and all powerful, then even things that we feel are terrible must, ultimately, not be.  But in order to believe this, you have to somehow convince yourself that rape, children being murdered and tortured and kidnapped, people destroying one another - somehow these are not actually bad things.  Somehow God "has a plan" and "has mandated it from the beginning" and "everything happens for a reason."  All I can say here is that if you actually believe that these things are not genuinely evil, and horribly wrong, then either you have never experienced genuine trauma, or your morality is completely different from my own.
          So maybe, instead, you decide that God must not be all good.  Well, this is the only option if God is in control of everything and terrible things really do happen.  What kind of monster-god would allow for children to be separated from their parents, tortured, left to die of dehydration and neglect?  What kind of monster-god would mandate that some people should be born with riches to fill the world while others cannot get enough to eat or drink?  What kind of god feels rape is acceptable?
        No, the above mentioned theologians, as well as many people across denominations and faiths who love God and spend time with God come to the conclusion instead that the "God is all-powerful" statement is the one that must be rejected.  Instead they point out that God wants genuine relationships with us.  And that means that we must be given free will, a free-will that allows people to make choices.  Sometimes that means people make terrible choices that in turn lead, at times, to terrible tragedies.  And because God is committed out of a deep, deep love for each of us, to letting us be who we choose to be: real people (not puppets, not dolls, not micromanaged robots) in real relationships, sometimes we do things that break God's heart.  OFTEN we do things that break God's heart.  And when that happens, God grieves with us as much as we ourselves grieve.  God cries with us, holds us, mourns for and with us.  But God still loves us too much to take away our ability to choose to be who we choose to be.  I believe the stance of not being all powerful is something God has chosen, for the sake of giving us genuine life, for the sake of choosing real relationship with us.
        Sometimes this makes me angry, just as it does for all of those who choose genuine, honest, real relationships with God.  Sometimes I become furious at God for not stepping in, stopping the wars, stopping the torture, stopping death and destruction.  But I also believe in a God who is big enough and loves me fully enough to be able to handle that anger.  Read the Psalms if you aren't sure.  They are full of words of anger at God, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?!" the psalmist shouts as he invites us to likewise raise our voices honestly to God.  Jesus echos this from the cross as well, again, giving us permission (as we are called to follow in every way) to likewise express our pain and anger to God.  Does God want you to suppress your feelings?  Does God want you to lie about what you actually feel?  Of course not!  The God who loved us into being is big enough to be able to hear and see and love us for ALL that we are, with all our pain, all our anger, all our pride, and all our misunderstandings.  That is the God who chooses us, chooses relationship with us, chooses to love us, and to stay with us despite what we do, what we say, what we feel and what we grieve.
       Let me be clear that I do not believe that God therefore leaves us alone.  We have been sent the Spirit, the advocate, who offers counsel and guidance.  God is with us to talk to, to listen, to respond.  God works through people, through nature, through scripture, through other writings, to all who are open to God's love, guidance, compassion, movement, encouragement, and wisdom.  But God does not compel our choices in any way.
        My God is big, big enough to love all of us with all of our faults, our mistakes, our tragedies, and our flaws.  My God is all good, love beyond measure, hope beyond despair, and compassion beyond rage.  Terrible things still happen.  And God is not responsible for those terrible things.  They happen, and God cries as her children are crucified again and again.  God cries as his beloveds suffer.  God weeps as we stumble our way through life sometimes hurting one another in awful ways.  AND God laughs with us when we learn, delights in us when we triumph, celebrates with us as we grow and move and expand in our ability to love and care and share and be the people God hopes for us to be.  This is the God I love.  This is the God I know.  This is the God I can count on to love me exactly as who I am, with my anger, and my grief, as well as my gratitude and my joy and my growing.  And for all of that I am, indeed, grateful.

Coming into our True Natures

Exodus 34:29-35,

2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2

Luke 9:28-36

I’d like to invite you to take a moment to think of a situation in which you weren’t seen for who you really are: a situation in which someone completely mis-understood you, didn’t get what you were saying or refused to see you as you really are and made assumptions about your motivation, or your personhood that were just plain wrong.  I think for most of us these situations have been painful or unpleasant, though it can also happen that someone thinks of you as better than you are, misunderstanding you in a way that puts you higher in someone’s esteem than you might deserve.  Can you think of a situation where you were judged or misunderstood?

When the kids were young, we read together a series by Noel Streatfield that begins with a book called Dancing Shoes.  And in the book, the little girl, Rachel, whose mother has just died, is seen as a sulky, cold, jealous little girl because she is adamant that her adopted sister, Hillary, not be part of the Wintle’s Little Wonders dance troupe.  The reader in the story is let in on to the fact that Rachel does not wish this for Hillary because she loves Hillary deeply, feels responsible for Hillary’s well being after the death of their mother, and believes that Hillary is capable of being a real ballet dancer with a professional ballet company.  But the adult characters in the book universally mis-understand Rachel and believe that she is an awful, unfeeling, jealous child.  This creates the tension or drama in the story which is only resolved at the end when she is finally seen and heard for who she is and finally treated as the loving child she is.  I found this story very difficult to read because of the pain central to this mis-understanding, and the pain of Rachel at being mis-treated because she was so terribly mis-understood.

But this theme, of mis-seeing someone, mis- understanding someone’s true character is a very, very common theme in our literature, in our television, in our movies.  In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth’s misunderstanding of Darcy (and visa versa), Jane’s misunderstanding of Bingley’s sisters, and everyone’s misunderstanding of Wickham make up the drama of the story line: all of which, again, are only resolved at the end.  In the movie Run Away Bride, the Julia Robert’s character is misunderstood by everyone, herself included.  Many of our stories involve someone being lifted up as a hero who really isn’t. Others involve judgement and condemnation on someone who doesn’t deserve it.  It is everywhere.  I’m sure you can think of many stories in which people are simply misunderstood, their motives and their actions read wrongly.  Their personhood or identity is read as something other than what it is.  And I believe that this is so central in our books because it is a very common experience that all of us have.  I am certain that everyone here could tell of at least one time in your life when your actions were completely misunderstood or misinterpreted, and undoubtedly this had results for you, many of which were probably unpleasant.

We experience the damage of these misunderstandings in our own lives, and yet I think we still tend to act on our own mis-interpretations of others at a smaller level on a daily basis.  We determine that the person next to us who made a mistake driving in the car is a jerk or an idiot.  We decide the sales person on the phone who can’t give us a lower price is greedy.  We see a person with their shirt half untucked and we decide they are a slob.  We assume a pregnant teenager is loose.  On a daily basis we all make snap judgments of others that do not allow us to really see who people are. 

I think this is common for two reasons.  First, we try to understand people by putting people into categories, setting up images of each person in our minds about who they are and what they are like in an effort to understand our world and to relate to it in a way that makes sense.  We all do this.  From a scientific perspective, we can’t make sense of the many images and bits of information that come at us all the time unless we somehow categorize and sort through the information, and we do this with the characters of the people we meet as well.  That person is a care-taker or that person is a cynic or that person is a little off their rocker.  These are ways in which we make sense of our world, try to gain a handle on who the people around us are, and determine how we want to interact with them, respond to them, engage them.

Second, despite our efforts to understand and box people, the reality is that people are very complex.  So, it is easy to get our judgments about people’s motivations for certain behaviors wrong because people rarely do anything for only one reason, or for a simple reason that can be easily understood and summed up.

Putting together that we are quick to make judgments about why people do what they do alongside with the fact that there are usually multiple reasons why a person does what they do, and we end up, in many instances with a false understanding of the people around us.

We’ve all been a victim of this at one time or another.  And chances are, we’ve all been mistaken in our understanding of others at one time or another.

This is about identity.  And so now I’d like to ask you to think about your own identity again for a moment.  Who are you at your basic core?  Who is it that God has called you to be?  When are you most fully yourself? 

Can you think of a moment or a time when you were most fully yourself: when you were the most whole, most God-following person, most you at your deepest core?  What did that feel like?  As you journey through your life do those moments come more or less often for you?  Are there certain situations that bring this out of you? 

One of my favorite movies is the Edward Norton film, Keeping the faith.  I shared with you last month a scene from this movie between the young priest and his mentor in which he was struggling with his call and whether or not he should stay a priest.  But there is another part that precedes that scene that takes place between the young priest and the woman friend he fell in love with.  She does not return his affections, but he still struggles with what it means for who he is at his core to love her.  He said to her, “I don’t know which feels worse: having my heart-broken, or starting to doubt myself because of what that means for me.”

She responded, “Don’t you dare doubt yourself because of me.  You have a gift and you know it.  If you start to doubt that because of me, I don’t know what I’d do with myself.”

And then Brian answered, “I don’t doubt myself because of you.  I feel like the best version of myself around you and that makes me doubt everything else.”

Where are we the best versions of ourselves?  When are we the best versions of ourselves? What does it mean to be the best version of your?  Who is it you, at your core, feel called to be?  This is different from the question of what you are called to DO.  This is about identity.  This is about who God has made you to be in your core, in your private moments, in your thoughts and your feelings as well as your actions.  Where do you feel most centered, most whole, most true to yourself and to God?  Do you pay attention to where and when and with whom you feel most yourself?  Most whole?  Most real?

Of course, part of our identity does involve what we do.  Our choices in thoughts, words and actions, who we choose as friends, how we treat those who have less power and resources: all of that says a great deal about who we are.  And what we do for a living, as well as in our daily life are an important part of that.  If our jobs are a real vocation for us then that is a prime part of our identity.  If our relationships are central to who we are, then that is central to our identity.  If our words and what we produce come from a place of call, then that is central to our identity.  For many of us we are defined by our roles as workers of whatever kind, also as parents, as a spouse, as a Christian - whatever it is that tugs at your heart and calls from you all of your being.  But then, what happens when something changes?  What happens to someone whose primary identity is as a parent when a child dies, or someone who is first and foremost a husband or wife when a divorce happens, or to someone whose identity is so connected to their work when they have to change a career or even when they retire?  These things can be devastating not only because they are stressful, but because they challenge our very identity.

All of today’s scriptural passages talk about identity, though it may be hard to see.  In the story of Moses talking to God, Moses’ face is changed by the conversation he has with God.  It becomes shiny, we are told, in a way that scares the people around him enough that he finds it necessary to hide his face behind a veil.  To me, this is a story that emphasizes that when we are closest to God (and I believe that the closer we are to God, the closer we are to our true selves, to our true identity) people around us see that.  It changes how we look, changes how others see us, changes how we present ourselves and how others perceive us.  I think about how many women glow during pregnancy: the joy of carrying another life can change how we move in the world.  Also when someone is passionate about something, it is not uncommon to see them glowing with that excitement, or radiating enthusiasm while they talk about it or while they live it. 

The passage from Corinthians talks about the veils we put on our own hearts, the ways in which we hide.  And to me, this is a hiding not only from others, but from ourselves as well.  We are called to work on removing those veils so that we can be most genuinely ourselves.  Those veils are sometimes easier to see in other people.  The ways people put on speech patterns for particular jobs, for example, is often a way of “veiling” who they are.  Without any real words at all, I am certain if I were to mock the speech patters of newscasters for example, or flight attendants giving the safety speech, you would know what profession I was acting out.  My daughter wrote a scene for her school musical theater performance in which she substituted colors for real words and gave an entire dialogue in which there was no question what she was saying because of the way she said it, the way she used her words, the tone of her speech.  In that case it was just a conversation.  But we have affected speech patterns in many of our professions.  Many pastors, for example, have very specific preaching or speech patterns.  Some have particular phrasings or words that put a person in a specific category.  You can tell where a pastor stands theologically, for example, when their prayer beings, “Father, we just want to thank you, Lord…”  You can assume a whole mess of stuff about the person when they begin that way.  But is any of it true to the base identity of who someone is?  These recognized speech patterns or phrases: these are veils: They are things we put them on.  They are not who we are.

And finally we have the scriptural story of Jesus’ transfiguration: a moment, a time, when Jesus was completely seen as he was, like Moses, with the glory of God shining from him and on him.  For just a moment, he is seen in his greatness by his closest friends.  They are given the gift of seeing who and how Jesus truly is.  And their reaction is to be afraid.  Why?  Partly because when a person is seen as they really are, they can’t be completely boxed, which means they can’t be completely understood.  The disciples don’t understand what they are seeing, and that is scary for them, and would be scary for any of us.  Of course, the other part of this is that Jesus’ identity was so far beyond what they expected, that it was scary in this way as well. 

But real identity is scary.  The core of who we are, I would say, not just for Jesus, but for us too, is something difficult to present, something difficult to claim, difficult to comprehend, something we are constantly working towards, journeying into.  More than that, our true identities, below all the social niceties and roles, are powerful.  They are close to God, they lack fear, they can speak truth, and do what is necessary to make changes in the world.  God calls us to make that journey into being our genuine selves.  God wants us to be the most “us” that we can be; the most true to ourselves, the most real.  God wants us to be the us that God intends us to be.

But for today, as we think about Jesus and as we think about who we are called to be, my challenge for you is not just to intentionally walk that journey, but also to remember that when you talk to someone, when you drive next to someone, when you interact with anyone, strive to remember that you are not seeing all of who they are, you are not getting the full picture, and that helping someone else to walk towards wholeness involves looking deeper, for who they really are, while knowing you won’t see it all, looking for the best in them.

I think coming into our true natures is something like recognizing that our real natures can move mountains.  Our real beings, through love, kindness, grace and compassion can make a difference.  We don’t have to fight to change the world when we are whole.  Just being the people we are intended to be can and will change the world.  Amen.