Thin Places

When Rome was building its massive empire, its army would conquer new lands and people groups.  After its machine and routine destroying, Rome would offer its protection and cultivate the conquered in the ways of the greatest Latin culture.  For years, the Roman lands experienced Pax Romana.  The peace of Rome.  People lived with Roman soldiers, administrators, and government officials dictating their lives and taking a percentage of their livelihoods.  It was calm.  But it was uncomfortable and not always easy.

            Jessi, the other half of me, perhaps the better half of me, passionately lives in a place that is often conquered by evil outside forces.  Poverty.  Violence.  Drugs.  Desolation.  She loves people.  She loves her work.  Yet, she has followed the voice to a new place, where she will continue to love and work and beat back at the poverty and desolation.  She’s going to our home, the roots of our childhood, just as I have left the roots for the branches of adventure (again).  Our catching up is over the Internet these days and as we chatted on Skype, we discussed how peace is not beauty queen cuddly, but incredibly uncomfortable and heavy hearted.  She loves the people of Detroit with her whole being, yet has decided to leave.  Jessi exists in the peace of knowing her decision to step away into a new challenge infuses her with joy.  But how do you say goodbye to the little ones you’ve seen grow, learn, and laugh?  Or leave the rich, life sustaining relationships of her “family” there?  The heart cannot separate itself into here or there.  Peace remains as the wooly blanket.  It’s warmth protects and reassures.  It just feels a bit prickly on the bare skin.  Jess’s own Pax Romana.

            The Romans brought their forcible peace and they brought their culture.  They also brought their roads.  This great empire shaped our future and its sticky note reminder can be found in its infrastructure.  Besides Italy, I’ve visited Roman ruins in the U.K. and France.  The ruins monument the power of the Pax Romana.  People build roads to follow peace.  I have found my Pax Romana led me to a family in the throes of a great crisis.  It is a thin place, as my father’s quoted Celtic theology would say.  It is the moments when two places of different natures blend.  Thin places transform.  Thin places transition.  Judy lies at this moment loosely tethered to earth while at the same time breathing in the place of Beyond, the Sacred.  She is gathering her ties in a bouquet and slowly pressing the flowers into the hands of those who carry her with them always.  The Celts thought twilight a sacred thin time, where the earthly and heavenly realms held hands and danced briefly.  Miracles happen when hands are held.  I live with three small boys and their father at Judy’s twilight.   Whenever I can now, I hold the hand of a little boy and squeeze it three times.  It’s our secret language as the shadows rise.  For each squeeze there is a word. I. Love. You.

            Our bodies as temples used to be a worn out cliché to me.  Thin places have refreshed me.  The ancient Jews had many layers to their Temple.  Each courtyard brought a person closer to the most Sacred center.  Fewer and fewer people could go into each courtyard and rituals of cleansing had to be undergone at each place in order to enter it.  Only the high priest once a year ever entered the Holy of Holies, where God dwelled among the people.  A thin place.  We hold our own temples within.  There are layers to us all.  The outer courtyards hold the most people, they are the everyday citizens of our lives.  Some have the honor of moving to the next courtyard and fewer still to the next.  These people cleanse themselves with the sharing of trust and knowledge and love.  Very few enter our Holy of Holies.  This thinnest of places, the dwelling of our truest selves.  The thin places between Sacreds flame miracles; Heaven and Earth squeeze hands.  The little boys have little ritual or requirement for their thin places, for they need many to enter to know which roads bring peace.  There are bricks for the walls waiting.  But for now, I snuggle with them at twilight, amongst their little boy miracles.  I cover us with a wooly Pax blanket.