{"id":363,"date":"2010-09-13T09:24:43","date_gmt":"2010-09-13T09:24:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/2010\/09\/thin-places-in-the-day-to-day.html"},"modified":"2010-09-13T09:24:43","modified_gmt":"2010-09-13T09:24:43","slug":"thin-places-in-the-day-to-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/09\/thin-places-in-the-day-to-day.html","title":{"rendered":"Thin Places in the Day to Day"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n\"mail.jpeg\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

There are physical places that do
\nsomething to our souls, that stir something inside of us. Often we even talk
\nabout those places in spiritual terms–those places evoke something that feels
\nconnected to God, or the divine, or whatever you choose to call it. As I’ve
\nwritten before<\/a>, I learned a few years back that Celtic Christians–Christians in
\nIreland many centuries ago–called those places “Thin Places,” places where
\nheaven and earth touch, where access to God seems more possible, more
\nimmediate.<\/p>\n

Those moments are wonderful when they
\ncome. <\/p>\n

But we don’t live there. <\/p>\n

\"dirtydishes.jpg\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

We don’t live our daily lives in
\ntranscendent moments, watching the sunset or stargazing or hiking in the woods.
\nWe live our lives amidst dirty dishes and, for some of us, dirty diapers,
\namidst piles of laundry and the demands of email and phone calls and all the
\nother mundane details of daily life. And in addition to those daily tasks that
\nfeel far from the serenity of a nature walk, there are times in our lives when
\nwe live amidst crisis–amidst illness or job loss or divorce or accidents or
\neven death. <\/p>\n

God is present on the mountaintops
\nand in the sunsets. I agree with the Celtic Christians who say there are “thin
\nplaces” out there. But honestly, I’ve never been transformed, I’ve never been permanently
\nchanged, by standing on a mountaintop. I’ve simply been inspired. I’ve been
\nawed by the grandeur of creation.<\/p>\n

But when I have gone back to the
\nvalley of daily life–whether that’s the valley of dirty dishes and not enough
\nsleep and writing deadlines, or the deeper valley of dashed dreams and
\nsuffering and death–when I have gone back to the valley of daily life, those
\nmoments on the mountaintop have not sustained me. It has been finding the “thin
\nplaces” in everyday life–seeing Jesus in the midst of wound care and cancer treatments,
\nin the midst of breastfeeding and potty training, hearing Jesus talk to me
\nabout what love looks like, about what hope entails… It’s in those “thin
\nplaces,” that my life has been changed. <\/p>\n

(These reflections are taken from a
\ntalk I gave in Virginia Beach on Friday<\/i>.)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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Two major life experiences have shaped her writing and her faith\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcaring for her mother-in-law as she battled cancer and welcoming her daughter Penny into the world after she was diagnosed at birth with Down syndrome. Both experiences expanded and enriched her understanding of what it means to be human and to receive each and every person as a gift.\u00c2\u00a0 A graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, she is the author of Penelope Ayers: A Memoir, and the forthcoming A Good and Perfect Gift (Bethany House). Her essays have appeared in First Things, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Century, ChristianityToday.com, and Bloom, among other online venues.","sameAs":["http:\/\/amyjuliabecker.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/author\/amyjuliabecker"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}