Spirituality and Science Converging in “Thin Places.”

 

Exodus 3:1-6, Isaiah 6:1-8, Mark 9:2-9, Hebrews 11:1-3.

 

Sermon delivered on August 13, 2006 by

Elder Charles H. Evans, Jr., M.D., Ph.D.

Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church

Bethesda, Maryland

 

 

Amen.

 

Moses and Jesus face to face with God on the mountain – two of the great spiritual moments in the Bible. Note the number of similarities in these two places of encounters with God: 1) they take place on a mountain top, 2) face to face with God, 3) the experience is transient, and 4) the moment is transforming.

 

 

 

And next on the Word in Mark:

 

Note the similarities in these two Biblical passages: 1) the mountaintop, 2) the unexpected meeting with God, 3) the transience of the moment and 4) the transformations of Moses, Jesus and the disciples. The other commonality in these two places is that the interface between supernatural and natural, the otherworld and this world, the spiritual and this world, the interface between God and us is very thin

 

Some of us have had mountaintop experiences or experiences in other places where we have sensed being much closer to God. To the 5^th century Celtic Christians these special places where the veil between God and man was very thin were called “thin places.” Thin places were not just any place, no the Celts, you know those who brought us the Celtic high cross consisting of a cross and a circle where the cross is the cross of Christ, the symbol of salvation with the circle representing God the Creator, and the Celtic knot- which represents how all things in heaven and on earth intricately intertwined and inseparable, the Celts believed,  in the Celtic tradition, even though God can be encountered anywhere, there are certain places where this happens most easily; “thin places.”

 

Thin places, thus, are where the interface between earth and heaven is more transparent or thinner. For the Celtic Christians thin places often were found at physical interfaces such as a mountain top or a shore line at the sea or lake. You might say thin places are “Close encounters with God.” A thin place is a place where it is possible to touch and be touched by God. “Thin Spaces” are the moments when we experience a deep sense of God’s presence in our everyday world. They may occur on a mountain top or at a shore line. But they also can occur in church, in your home or in any place where you find yourself closer to God, where the veil between the spiritual and the natural world is thinner, where God breaks through to you.

 

You may say that thin places are just as much thin moments as they are thin places. To some, however,  “Thin places should not be confused with thin moments, those being times when that mysterious power is felt during a particular experience in a synchronistic course of events such as the birth of a child, the return of a loved one, reconciliation with an enemy or spiritual awakening. To those individuals way of thinking a thin place is simply that – a PLACE were the veil is thin. The place itself calls you, draws you into itself, transports you into the presence of the world beyond this world. The thinness of place moves you into the presence of the mysterious power.” (1)  But whether it is a place or a moment or both the idea of thin places is very old. We walk through them all through our lives. Some of us notice the thinness, some do not for often we are preoccupied with other activities and events.

 

It has been said that, “Thin places are ports in the storm of life, where the pilgrims can move closer to the God they seek, where one leaves that which is familiar and journeys into the Divine presence. They are stopping places where men and women are given pause to wonder about what lies beyond the mundane rituals, the grief, trials and boredom of our day-to-day life. They probe to the core of the human heart and open the pathway that leads to satisfying the familiar hunger and yearnings common to finding peace.” (1)

 

Reverend Donnel McClellan says, “Thin places are often the locations of epiphanies, moments when the holy becomes visible to human eyes. ….Thin places elude those with no mind for mystery and no longing for transcendence.” (2) Wow, that’s a pretty strong assertion! But certainly if you are not prepared for a mystical experience, not receptive to being moved to a new level, then you will probably not recognize when you are in a thin place as being more closely connected to God. Many of us do have memories of thin places where God’s presence is tangible and memorable.

 

George Gallup reported nearly twenty years ago that American’s have an affinity for sensing the mystical or holy. He wrote: Our surveys have shown that nearly one-third of all Americans or about 47 million people, have what they call a religious or mystical experience. Of this group about 15 million report an otherworldly feeling of union with a divine being. They describe such things as special communications from deceased people or divine beings, visions of unusual lights, and out of body experiences. For instance, one said, “I was reading the Bible one night and couldn’t sleep. A vision appeared to me. I was frozen and motionless. I saw an unusual light that wasn’t there - but was. There was a great awareness of someone else being in that room with me.” (3)

 

Marcus Borg, one of the great liberal contemporary biblical scholars, in describing the qualities of thin places looks to William James who identified 4 qualities that accompany such authentic experiences: First, they are ineffable – we can not say exactly what happened. Second, they are transient. Third they are passive – they happen, we do not create them, Fourth, they are noetic – they connect with our intellect and leave us with the sense we know something we did not know before. (2)

 

Every worship service is a thin space although worship services usually do not have all four qualities that William James associated with thin spaces as authentic experiences. Nevertheless “Many worshipers have min-mystical experiences triggered by an element of the service: exchanging the peace of Christ with someone, watching a child during Time with Children, a phrase in a prayer, a line in a hymn, a thought in a sermon, the delightful harmonies of an anthem, a word of benediction which lingers,”(2) “Thin places are also transitional places. They exist where change is erupting, where routine is disturbed, where opposing forces come together in conflict and confluence. They are not comfortable places but encounters with God are seldom comfortable.” (2)

 

Have you ever felt that way in church or at another time and place? Felt that change was erupting, your routine was being disturbed, opposing forces were coming together in conflict and confluence, and you were uncomfortable. I have felt that way at times in church but that does not mean a “thin place” was present, only that the conditions were right or, possibly because of preoccupation with other things I did not appreciate the thinness of the place.  Reverend Sam Alexander points out that “Thin places are those places and occasions when you can just touch the grace of God, when you know God is present to you, a thin place, a thin veil between us and the grace of God.” (4)

 

Thin places may be a place, a time, even a person. Certainly Jesus Christ is the ultimate thin place, “the place where we can reach out and touch and hold the presence of God, be changed by it.” “When we come to worship, when we enter into the ritual and go through the movements of worship, we are trying to place ourselves in that thin spot where the love and the grace of God can flood into us.” (4) Reverend Mel Williams reminds us that Thin places are also places of transfiguration – transformation (5). Mountain top experiences, moments of revelation. For Moses standing before the burning bush was – a holy moment, a holy place. For Jesus and the disciples on the Mountain of Transfiguration it was similarly so. 

 

Marcus Borg in The Heart of Christianity writes quoting Thomas Merton, a twentieth century Catholic mystic, “We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through everything. The only thing is that we [normally] don’t see it. But occasionally, we do see. Thin places are the places where these two levels of reality meet or intersect. They are places where the boundary [between the mundane and the sacred] becomes very soft, porous, permeable. Thin places are where the veil momentarily lifts and we behold God, experience the one in whom we live, all around and within us.” (6,7)

 

Thin places can be geographical – mountain top experiences, can happen in a church, in a concert hall, at home, on a subway, almost anywhere. Thin places can be heard, touched, smelt, even tasted. They can take place in holy moments, on Easter morning, Christmas Eve, or at the least expected time. Holy Communion can be a thin place. Baptism can be a thin place where more than the individual being baptized is transformed.

 

What about science and “thin places?” Science on its recent reductionist path to describe everything in terms of molecules and atoms continues to have questions with no answers and that can not be tested with the scientific method: What was present before the big bang that created the universe? Why are we here? How did we get here? Why is there a moral law – that is why do we inherently know right from wrong and have an altruistic nature? Science has no answer to these questions. Science and scientists, moreover, have many mystical encounters although scientists as a rule are reluctant to admit and discuss them. Certainly science through out its continually unfolding history is full of revelations and to some, some of these occur in thin places.

 

Francis Collins, Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at NIH and who is also a Presbyterian, in his new book The Language of God describes some of his mystical experiences–

 

 

Collins continues:

 

 

These mystical experiences will continue for those of us who pursue science and technology as we probe deeper and deeper into the complexities of life pursuing the questions that science can only approach but not answer with our worldly laws, principles and tools: (1) Why are we here?; (2) How did we get here?; (3) What does life mean?; and (4) What is the reason for the great Moral Law – Why are we humans inherently altruistic and know right from wrong? Faith is an important part of science just as it is in religion. 

 

Let’s look at Psalm 8 for the interface between science and faith.

 

“O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet; all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in and the earth!”     Ps. 8:1-9 (NIV).

 

But does science converge on thin spaces? Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest and Professor of Christian Spirituality at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur Georgia, in her book The Luminous Web – essays on science and religion, writes:

 

“While science might prefer to use the word discovery” instead of “revelation” the scientific establishment is no less amazed by our ability to know things. For example, and the best example is mathematics which is pure thought. Another is the discovery or revelation by Watson and Crick in 1953 that the structure of DNA is a double helix – revealed by analysis of x-ray crystallographic data.” (9 page 67) The Nobel laureate Albert Szent-Gyorgi has said: “Discovery consists in seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.” How often these revelations occur in a thin place is not very scientific to report to ones peers, so the frequency that science converges on thin places remains itself somewhat of a mystery.

 

Science can not explain where complexity comes from any better than religion can explain why bad things happen to good people. Every effort to understand reality begins with a leap of faith; the acceptance of a certain point of view, the adoption of a certain set of symbols. Whichever ones we choose, there does not, at this moment of time, seem to be any way around the experience of awe. According to the great physicist Albert Einstein, “The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit paleontologist, said, “Less and less do I see any difference between research and adoration.” (9 p77) More and more with continuing advances in health science and in biotechnology as in other areas of science we face ethical and moral questions and decisions that the scientific method can not answer or provide a decision enabling us to move forward. But forward we go drawing on the tools, insights and faith we have.

 

As we move from the reductionist era of describing everything in terms of its lowest common denominator - the cell, the molecules, the atoms towards a greater appreciation and understanding of the system, the veil between spirituality and science itself thins and often both spirituality and science find themselves converging in thin places. This is particularly the case for science where we can never answer by testing a hypothesis:

 

1)     Why are we here?

2)     How did we get here?

3)     What does life mean?; and

4)     How did we acquire the great Moral Law

 

Who guides scientists in making moral and ethical decisions where the scientific method is not yet sufficient? For some a power beyond this natural world plays in their decisions, for some this is God and in some instances it occurs or develops in thin places. For some of you who are not scientists by training and vocation,  health, business, legal, and other decisions are heavily impacted by science and your spirituality and science in those activities may well converge as you find yourself in a thin place.
 

 

Will you stop and recognize your thin places when they occur and be transformed during those ineffable, transient, passive and noetic moments of awe? I hope you will and I will.

 

 

 

 

 

Accessed on August 12, 2006.