Dean of Identity | Mr Charles Brauer

Thin Places

A warm welcome to Term 4 . I hope your family was able to enjoy some restful time together over the recent break. 

One of the gifts presented to me over the break was taking the chance to catch up on some reading, and a little Netflix. While normally I opt for light-hearted holiday reads, I found myself being intrigued by the book The Heart of Christianity. In particular, it struck a chord with me regarding the experience of faith in a modern world, and how the essence of Christianity is, and always will be, a relevant and powerful way of being. Still resonating with me since completing the book is the concept of ‘thin places’.

‘Thin place’ theology is linked to Celtic traditions of the fifth century as a way of describing the presence and experience of God. Christian practices; prayer, sacraments, hymns, liturgical seasons are constructed and facilitated to become ‘thin places’ where our hearts open to the experience of God. Linked to this is another theology – panentheism. Are you still with me?

Panentheism is a practice that imagines God as an encompassing spirit. This imagination is relatively new to Christian theology and a key tenet of a more modern view of the faith. Panentheism’s evolution arises from a shift in perspective from God being an interventionist who acts from afar and is largely separated from the lived experienced. Consequently, those who adopt a divine-interventionist view of God are experiencing God as absent and not present, which is contradictory to the Christian faith tradition that has always affirmed the Spirit of God as omnipresent. Alternatively, panentheism views God as omnipresent, and by definition of its greek roots, “in” “everything”. Have I lost you?

In very simple terms, this may explain why some love to; fish, do yoga, garden, surf, hike. Perhaps through these experiences we position ourselves in ‘thin places’, whereby we allow ourselves to become closer to, and experience, something bigger than ourselves and beyond explanation. Something that is life-giving. Now I know why I love cricket so much! 

I will leave you this week with well-known Twentieth-century Trappist monk Thomas Merton’s summary of  the concept of the omnipresence of God:

Life is simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining through it all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently. God shows Himself everywhere, in everything, in people, in things, in nature and in events. It becomes very obvious that God is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without Him. It is impossible, the only thing is that we don’t see it.

I hope you can find your ‘thin place’. Golf anyone?