May is a busy month! Proms, graduations, concerts, Mother’s Day, beginnings and endings. There is so much to do.
The words from Psalm 46:10 say, “Be still and know that I am God.” It made me think of Minong, WI, a place where my family likes to vacation. I can sit and quiet my mind, but for the second year in a row we won’t be going because, well, we’re just too busy!
My friend Tom recently shared an article he wrote called, “Thin Places” about a time we all spent together celebrating his 60th birthday in the Smoky Mountains. He rented a lodge with lots of rooms and gathered several of his closest friends and family the weekend in March of 2020 right before the world shut down because of COVID.
Tom’s friends and family weren’t the only visitors that weekend. A few black bears showed up on the deck of the lodge.
He wrote, “We went very still. The bears did not. They moved along the railing with that unhurried confidence that large wild animals have when they are entirely at home and you are entirely a guest. For a few long moments, the only thing between us was glass.”
I remember that moment and he is right. We all froze.
Nobody said anything. We just watched.
He continues in his article, “What settled over that cabin wasn’t fear, exactly. It was something older than fear. Something closer to awe.”
The Celtic Christians had a phrase for places like this. They called them “thin places.” It is where the distance between the human and the holy, between the visible and the invisible, grows so thin you can almost see through it. You don’t have to be told when you’ve found a thin place. Something in you goes quiet before you consciously decide to keep silent.
The created world has always been the most widely available scripture. Long before anyone wrote anything down, human beings were already reading the pages. They read about holiness in the stars, the sea, the sunrise, the bears, and the birds.
Every tradition that has ever tried to say something true about God has reached for the natural world around them because it refuses to merely be scenery.
The same God who called creation good in the beginning is the God who still meets us in that creation. Not metaphorically, actually. The thin places are thin because God is closer than we imagine. God is present in ways that exceed our categories and resist being contained inside our buildings, our doctrines, our denominations, and our Sunday mornings. God is with us always, everywhere, and anywhere.
So go about the busy month ahead and as you do, don’t forget to take time to be still. Let the world do what the world does. Be conscious of noticing God. See God in the sky, a line of trees, or a field of grass. Hear God in a bird’s call, a baby’s cry, or laughter and celebratory cheers.
The God who made it all is still in it, still speaking, still very near! Discover the thin places and when you do: Stop. Look.
Listen Be still and know that God is.
Don Long
Don Long Jr. is the Pastor of Wesley United Methodist Church., 1212 Calhoun St., Macomb.
