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| Monday, March 12, 2012 |
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Thin Places in the Subway
By webmaster @ 12:01 AM :: 449 Views ::
0 Comments :: Sister Carol Perry
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Many of the ancient peoples firmly believed in searching for the "thin places", those gaps in the world's surface that let in some glimpse of the spiritual world that waits beyond our temporal realm.
Many of us are familiar with the Celtic belief that, as the year wanes in the autumn, the thin places gape open and evil spirits too can emerge. So, to frighten them away from good homes, turnips (or pumpkins) are carved with grotesque faces lighted by candles, and the evil ones pass by. We regularly carve our Halloween decor, little thinking of the origin of that custom.
Places of natural beauty were also thought to be "thin". A mountaintop, a sunrise, a forest glade -- each had the possibility of allowing the soul to taste briefly the world beyond and to uplift the soul with gratitude.
I wonder if Lent isn't another way of searching for that place where our world of temporality can be interrupted by a flash of something more. We pray, we do good works, we become more thoughtful in an effort to find that more elusive world where we can meet God. Happily, we do not have to wait for seasonal change, although the very word, Lent, is from the Old English word for spring. The natural calendar does enter in.
Since my daily route does not take me to mountaintops, I have to look for my thin places where I find myself. They are there. I see the soul within in the face of the young mother who is off to work and to day care with a carriage and baby at 7:00am; in the gradually clearing frown from the brow of the student so obviously working out a problem to his satisfaction as the L train winds its way into Union Square; in the body language of the workman who finishes his coffee and his foreign-language newspaper at the same moment. You've seen him, haven't you? He gives a satisfactory tug to his jeans as he tosses both of his impedimenta into the nearest trash can and heads up the subway stairs with resolution.
Look for them yourself, and then pray, as I do, at the glimpses of goodness seen in daily concerns. That's a gift! |
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