BOOK GIVEAWAY: Thin Places

I’m loving this. 2 ways I’ve experienced a thinplace was when friends got together and held a free coffee and snacks morning in a community in Luton England, where we got to know the people who came.
Again in the same community we did carol singing and handed out wrapped gifts to people passing by and at the local pub.

I have been part of leadership at my church in the high school age since I graduated high school myself. Recently we started doing small groups and getting the kids into a more interactive role in their faith. I have seen the space between them and their Savior made thinner and thinner as they desire a deeper knowledge and a more intimate relationship rather than a disconnected one like I have seen many Christians have. These kids are experiencing God in ways they never had before because they are breaking through barriers and over coming obstacles that bring God Almighty into a proximity that permeates into their daily lives.

I am trying to live intentionally where I live by being active in groups that aren’t exclusively Christian. This way I am able to be in real relationships..and be able to share the hope of Christ with those that don’t know him. Listening to people share about struggling marriages, failed friendships, parenting struggles, etc. I would love to see more ways I can live incarnationally right here and now, instead of having to go to other countries.

A thin place in my family – sitting next tp the ocean – watching my 12 year old fill sea shells into the lines of the labyrinth we’ve drawn in the san – listen to the surf and the birds – recognizing the nearness of God in the moment.

Our neighborhood values creative expression. The arts are a thin place for us.

“In what way(s) have you experienced a thin place in your neighborhood/community?”

I have experienced a thin place in my community in two ways. The first is through an old church building in the mountains above the rural village where I pastor. Each year we hang a sign out at our regular meeting place and take a pilgrimage up into the mountains. We hold Sunday services there and then spend the entire afternoon hanging out and chatting around a potluck lunch and a camp fire. The walls of the people and the barrier between us and ‘heaven’ seem to fade away during this time…

The other way that I have experienced a thin place probably fall more in line with your book. Namely, there are times when I am volunteering at our village food pantry that the Lord just does something special. It can’t be explained rationally…but something shifts and you can feel Jesus there with you as you love and bless the folks coming in… definitely a thin place.

“What is one way you can best use the message of this book to influence the way you engage in your community/church/neighborhood?”

Having not read the book yet, I can’t say for sure how I can use its message…but if I had to guess, I would say that it would be helpful in helping both myself and those in my church to recognize the movement of the Spirit in the streets and byways of our community.

Last week I had a fascinating conversation with a neighbor whom I met by simply commenting on her tatoo. “I’m not religious,” she said, “but I found this in a cathedral in France and it has impacted me deeply.”Her tatoo had a quote from Jesus woven into a beautiful drawing of a stain glass window.
Our time together was a Thin Place. I sensed the holy spirit with us we talked about Jesus and how his life continues to transform our world.

Recently, Doug and I were at a Restaurant with another couple. We were enjoying talking and joking with our waitress. When she brought our food, our friend was going to thank God for our food, but before he did he asked our waitress if she had anything we could pray for, for her. She paused for awhile…then said, “just a safe trip home.”. After dinner she brought our check, and a long personal note. The note said, “Thank you for caring enough to pray for me. I have been very depressed lately, have pulled away from everyone this summer, and am contemplating suicide. I really need your prayers…it really feels good to know someone cares.”.
Our friends went back to see her the next day, and hooked her up with their daughter’s phone number, who is a crisis counselor.
Thin Places…

My first experience of a thin place was at the age of 19. I was sitting out one night on the mountainside in Chamonix, France, and the dark was like velvet, with the outlines of the mountains across the valley like brushing on the nap, and the stars studding the skies. Suddenly, there was a stilling within that matched the stillness without, and it was as if I could hear the very heartbeat of God.

Since then, I have found thin places much more frequently, as my years have accumulated – thin places amongst growing things, with children, in my rocking chair (which is usually where I pray), in moments of deep compassion with a hurting soul shared, in silent mountain grandeur, and kayaking upon the sea – and even, occasionally, in a church or two!

I’m interested in this book and checking out your resources to engage groups in this important work.

In planting a new church as a parachute drop, there were tons of thin places, but my favorite ones were interactions with folks where I never mentioned what we were doing. Inevitably, it came up in conversation at some point, but the relationship was well on its way before our mission was ever mentioned.

Normally, I experience “thin places” in Nature. During hikes, there would be some places where I felt “swallowed up”. God would seem to be everywhere and in everything.

However, I am intrigued by the notion of having such an experience within a human community and setting. I have felt what some describe as “the spirit moving” in worship gatherings, but not of the intensity I feel in Nature. I look forward to reading your book and culling its insights : ))

Hi Jon, I don’t twitter and when you say tag, do you mean running on grass… “tag your it?” I’m in the fading “thin place”
generation of writing long hand notes and letters to those I love! LOL With that said, my older heart pitter patters when I read and here of Max and Molly’s fellowship down in SD. I’ve belonged to Jesus for 40 years now and I love how He whispers to your NC family. It stirs my desire to learn from you youngins’! Jesus is the greatest love in my life, and I would so enjoy seeing Him in “Thin Places”more and more each day! Max’s Momma Pam (Tag your it!) : D

So, let me practice a little storytelling . . .

This delicately hidden thing was just an arm’s length away. Our stair landing had become the observation deck. Tucked into the forked branches of the Silver Dollar trees just beyond the window a hummingbird had built her nest. And we got to watch.
This perfectly camouflaged little bird was no bigger than a leaf and was the same color—a leaf with wings that kept falling horizontally from the branch and reattaching itself to it. Rachel and Erik would sit there and watch, and Jill. Nancy and I took turns, as did our girls. It was a marvel. This wild little mother-to-be was feathering her nest for us to see. The nest was the size of an egg coddler, made of pine needles, leaf mould, plant down and spider’s web. But it wasn’t built to coddle eggs, it was meant to hatch them.
The two eggs were the size of sweet English peas. And for the next three weeks she sat there watching us watch her. The glistening little creatures that hatched from the shells took more than a week before they even began to look like birds. And more than three weeks longer before they flew away. It turns out that we got to witness this whole thing because of only one reason—we happened to have planted Silver Dollar trees just outside the stairway window.
Our original thought was to dapple the hot morning sun in the front rooms to help keep the place cooler naturally, but something more happened—a beautiful and unanticipated ecological event. Hummingbirds became our neighbors. In looking for natural ways to create our own habitat, we had inadvertently created another one. In ways that we hadn’t fully considered at the time, our lives made others’ lives possible.
This idea began to inform so much of what we did. In this suburban experiment in intentional Christian that we were calling Riverbend Commons, we talked about what we wanted to see happening around here and then set about creating habitats where those things could take hold and flourish.
Hospitality, for instance. Since we knew that welcoming the stranger was the way of Jesus, and was among our gifts, we had made it part of our mission statement. So, we figured that to make people feel welcome we needed to make them feel comfortable, safe, and wanted. Comfort came from having ample places to sit and to sleep, and came from an aesthetic that is beautiful, warm, natural, and not too personal. Safety came from keeping the common spaces clean and from providing all manner of private spaces for retreat. And feeling wanted, like you belonged, came from all these physical things, and from being able to walk through the front door without knocking after your first visit, and being met with interested smiles and warm embraces when you did, and being given space and time share stories.
These conditions simply make for a wonderful place to be. Who couldn’t like this? Maintaining them took some effort, of course, and some willingness, and a whole lot of trust. But with many hands and many hearts we find it utterly doable. So, we dust, vacuum, wipe down counters, put dishes away, keep sinks and toilets clean, tend the yard—pretty standard household stuff. Monastics would call them “the daily offices.” Our parents called them “chores.” We call them “ministry opportunities” (almost as a joke). Because whatever you call it, cleaning a toilet and pulling a weed, “by any other name would smell . . . ” you get my meaning.
The result of this, however, is difficult to describe and the stories too numerous to keep. Take one single mom, for example, a friend caught in the rocky terrain on the backside of marriage. She would come to just sit. While she was on her own, trying to make a new way for herself and her three boys and the inevitable blows of her new reality would hit hardest, she told us that sometimes, when she was out driving, she would be overwhelmed with the urge to go to Riverbend to just rest in the peace of the place. She said it felt as if her car would find its way to Riverbend Circle and deposit her at the curb. She wasn’t needing company. She was needing peace. And she claims that this peace began to play an important role in her healing.
I’m not saying that any of us ever thought to ourselves while we were approaching a bathroom with rubber gloves or a table with a feather duster, that I’m going to scrub that sink to heal people. But I’m also not going to deny that some holy thing happened here beyond our efforts that these conditions helped make possible.
This is no experiment in cause-and-effect any more than planting a tomato seed and watering it is. Despite what some may feel in unguarded moments, no farmer will claim, in good conscience, that they make tomatoes grow. At best, they create the conditions, do what they know to do—preparing soil, planting seeds, watering the ground, and keeping vigilant throughout the season to maintain these conditions and respond quickly to threats. But this is where their agency ends. They do not animate the processes in the stem or leaf or flower to fruit. The plant itself must do that. And the plant has not designed the process within itself, but merely is what it is, and does what it does. The farmer merely partners in this process, partners to an extent with the plant, and partners with the plant’s designer. Though it’s easy to see that much of this process is predictable, at the end of the day, a farmer puts a seed in the ground and waters it and hopes.
To emphasize the explainable processes, as if they can be fully explained, in an effort to silence the doubts we carry about God or about our own effectiveness in the world is to rob ourselves of the thrill in the possibility that we live in service to a mystery and are daily invited to bear witness to it.
Hospitality, comfort, safety, belonging, peace, healing. I can’t explain how it works, but it seems to be part of a beautiful mechanism in a kingdom designed by our loving creator who promises wholeness and hope. Our friend’s story has become one in a growing catalog of similar stories around here, of blessings that spring up in the place and cling to it.
In 2005 Riverbend Commons became certified as a National Wildlife Habitat—just another curious piece of this ongoing experiment in reimaging life in the suburbs. We suspect that stuff like this is just the beginning, though. Like the Silver Dollar trees planted outside our window, we wonder what other habitats are being created around here: Creativity, Remembrance, Gratitude, Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Humility, Holiness? We desire to be agents of these things, and look for them with great expectancy, not certain how it all works, exactly, but certain in the goodness of the God who works through all of them. Hummingbird nests are within reach sometimes, and ripe tomatoes, too, in season, but we’re learning more and more, everyday we do this, that a hidden Kingdom always is.