Celtic spirituality holds to a concept of thin places. Those geographic spots where the distance between people and God seems shortened - where the barrier between the physical and spiritual seems thinner. I am not sure how far down that road I can travel, but there are certainly times and places that seem to make you think a little harder and listen a little closer.
I flew down to the eastern seaboard for the residency period to start my second year of PhD studies at Eastern University. This time I flew into Baltimore and caught a ride with a classmate from the Washington DC area.
On the way up to Philadelphia we visited Gettysburg. I don't claim to know much about the battle that took place there - I'm Canadian ask me about Batoche - but we had used one of the battles as a case study on leadership during crisis. As we stood at Little Round Top and looked around at the actual places and landmarks mentioned in the account you could almost step into the horror of that day (destruction for both sides). It was definitely a thin place as we stood in a place that marked the depths of humanity's ability to harm itself.
On the first day of residency we traveled up early and stopped at Pindle Hill Retreat Centre - which is not far from our campus. This is a place run by the Friends (aka the Quakers) for people wanting to take time to gather for a retreat or to spend a year or more sojourning. It is a wonderfully quiet place in spite of the traffic that now runs past it. Sitting in the meeting hall almost begs you to stop and think deeply for a moment - to pray, to push away the busy-ness that crowd out God's presence, to search for that inner light. This was the place that Parker Palmer served in and wrote many of books at. It was a thin place as it marked the reflectiveness that God calls us to enter into.
The residency took us out to Camden, New Jersey. It has the distinction of ranking high in every social statistic that you would rather score low in - teen pregnancy, violent crime, poverty, incarceration rates, and the list goes on. We were served by a number of the young people from that community that are trying to reverse those trends and redeem the culture of poverty that has taken over the lives of too many residents and generations of Camden. The people from Urban Promise were making a difference. It was good to celebrate this with them. It was also a thin place as we celebrated the capacity for people to serve and be served.
Unfortunately that is where the thin places ended - the next days were marked by working lunches at restaurants where the food went in as fast as the ideas came out (at least in my case). For the next three months I will connect with my classmates over technology as they return to various points in the US and Africa. January will mark the next residency and the approxiamte halfway point of the PhD pursuit. Each semester has come about only by the grace of God and the generosity of friends and so I will keep my head down and keep going. When I need it most I will experience a timely thin place moment or an act of generosity that keeps me going.
Migwec,
Ehkosit!
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