If a thin place is where the veil between heaven and earth can be brushed easily to one side, how can we be more attentive for those places? How can we tune our beings to be more aware of those moments and places? I think one practice can be to attend more to the moments and those that are around us in those moments. For whatever reason, whether having worked in service industries or having had so many large classes of students or even from serving in the local church, I tend to ask people to tell me their names. From the casher at the grocery to the waitress in the restaurant, I talk to folks using their first name. Doesn't actually mean that I will recall their name later, but I will address them by their name. This credits a level of familiarity and dignity between the two of us, which I find holds them in a place more credible than simply being the nameless person.
Because of the variety in my past, I always make a point of knowing where I am. Not simply in terms of geographically, but in terms of who is in that space with me, and what is taking place in that space. The beauty or starkness of a place needs to be observed and appreciated. It is a place, regardless of how we perceive it, that God has made. It has a purpose, even when we don't understand it, that must be honored. Often we look past areas which we are familiar with, or see too often, or choose not to see. I think one way we can become more aware of thin places is in watching for them in places that we might not anticipate there presence. Sure, the Isle of Iona is a thin place. As is St. Joseph's Abbey, and any of the holy sites in Israel.
But equally thin are the places like Bossier City, La,
let's look in our own places for their thinness.
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