thinnest space (erin jean warde)

In spiritual circles, we often talk about what we call thin spaces or thin places — that is, the spaces and places in our lives when the veil between heaven and earth feels most thin.

A photo I took in the Garden of Gethsemane.

thinnest space

Black against the golden grass and many inches deep into prairie earth, the trail follows the natural contours as if centuries of footfalls have preceded my own. It’s just me, the grass, and the sky, and two bald eagles riding the thermals. Cresting the ridge releases me into an explosion of light and space and wind. My head catches fire at the sight. I cannot tell you more of that high and holy place. Words blow away. Even thought dissipates like wisps of cloud sailing up the headland. There is only being.

In spiritual circles, we often talk about what we call thin spaces or thin places — that is, the spaces and places in our lives when the veil between heaven and earth feels most thin.

When I went on my pilgrimage through the Holy Land many years ago, I assumed — given all the time I spent worshipping in churches — that the cathedrals and worshipping walls would be the thinnest of them all.

One of our first stops was to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, an entire church built to honor the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. I like to say the incarnation keeps me Christian when I’m tempted to run, because I need my God to be with me, so I had high hopes visiting this most holy place.

There was one problem: crowds. Apparently other people also care about Jesus’ birth. I felt claustrophobic, at times trapped. I wanted to savor every second, as I felt I was supposed to do, but the crowds and claustrophobia clawed at my experience.

I suppose that’s what it means when they put down the camera and stand on the headland, straining to hear above the wind with that wistful look, the gaze out to sea. They look like they’re trying to remember what it would be like to love the world.

But there were spaces that felt open, free, where the air moved quickly through my hair, and fresh into my lungs. Imagine my surprise when, while I enjoyed the majesty of the worshipping walls — I found the holy of holies to be the very earth Jesus walked on, the waters he dipped his toes into, the rocks where he would have perched to catch fish.

There was something so, so thin about the chill that ran from my toes to the crown of my head when I waded into the Sea of Galilee. It was hot, and the sea offered me relief, and I imagined how often Jesus might have put his toes in just to feel the same.

Ceremony focuses attention so that attention becomes intention. If you stand together and profess a thing before your community, it holds you accountable. Ceremonies transcend the boundaries of the individual and resonate beyond the human realm. These acts of reverence are powerfully pragmatic. These are ceremonies that magnify life.

I love the ceremonies of the Church — I am a priest, after all — and I have come to believe they are holy inside and outside the worshipping walls. The crisp waters of Galilee called me into an attention, which became intention. I was brought into the memory of how the waters called the disciples on that same beach; I was brought into the memory of how those same waters were calling me into a calling just by touching my feet and traveling toe to crown.

The services where we prayed together were not lesser than the experiences of nature, no, not in the slightest. If anything, the prayers we prayed, together as one community, punctuated the holiness of God and the earth. The pragmatic experience of putting feet into water becomes the transcendent moment, but when you are joined to the greater community after your transcendence? That’s a ceremony that magnifies life.

The broken link between land and people, between the past and the present, aches like a badly broken bone still unknit.

And, even knowing how the earth, sand, wind, and sky can become the thinnest space, I still struggle to stay alongside the earth I know holds holiness. I still struggle to give the earth her due, to receive her riches, and to tend to her just the same.

How is it that I can be so close to holiness, then wonder how to find it?

There is an ache, a brokenness between the land and myself, between the transcendence and this moment.

For grief can also be comforted by creation, by rebuilding the homeland that was taken. The fragments, like ash splints, can be rewoven into a new whole. And so we are here along the river, kneeling in the earth with the smell of sweetgrass on our hands.

And where there is an ache, God is quick to provide a balm. In this broken state, I am not forsaken, but instead invited to rebuild.

On Saturday, I did a photo shoot for my website. It’s easy for me to say that “doesn’t count,” because I was changing outfits, posing, not just dwelling inside the beauty of nature. But do we really think God and the earth hold such a tally against us? The more and more I receive the wisdom of this book, the more I see how the earth and my God are connected — so I wonder if the earth is as gracious as my God, as willing to take me back, even when I haven’t come to visit in quite some time.

How is it that I can be so close to holiness, then wonder how to find it?
What if holiness is always ready to receive me when I’m ready to receive it?

Two hundred years is young for the trees whose tops this morning are hung with mist. It’s an eyeblink of time for the river and nothing at all for the rocks. The rocks and the river and these very same trees are likely to be here in another two hundred years, if we take good care.

Finally, on our pilgrimage we reached one of the sites I most wanted to visit: the Garden of Gethsemane. As the story goes, on the night of his betrayal and arrest, Jesus prays in the garden of Gethsemane. In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus prays, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” This passage has become a cornerstone for my faith, because we see the deep wrestling Jesus himself prayed through. Jesus himself cries out, he is honest before God, he prays the fullness of his heart. He asks that the cup would please pass by him, so he would not feel pain. He also chooses to trust God.

And there is no better way to express how I feel — eternally asking to let the cup of my pain pass, but also trying as hard as I can to choose to trust God come what may.

It’s important for me, in my faith, to know that when I feel this tug between asking for deliverance and choosing to trust, this tug does not cast me out of my faith. No, this war between asking for deliverance and choosing to trust joins me to God.

This worry, doubt, fear — they are prayers Jesus himself already prayed.

We were told that the trees in the garden of Gethsemane are so old, they would have been around during the time of Jesus. I walked through the garden, eyes fixed on the trees beside me, knowing they might have also been the tree holding him up when he was overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.

It was the trees. It was the trees where Jesus prayed — where Jesus worried, doubted, feared for his life, then committed his life to trust in God — that were the thinnest place of all.

I want to stand by the river in my finest dress. I want to sing, strong and hard, and stomp my feet with a hundred others so that the waters hum with our happiness. I want to dance for the renewal of the world.

May you find your very own thinnest space. Then, sing strong and hard, stomp your feet, feel the water’s hum of happiness from toe to crown. Dance for the renewal of the world. Let Spirit and trees hold you up in your darkest hour.

With love & care,
EJW

I hope you are enjoying Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer.

I’ll be back next week with a reflection on pages 340-384.
WE WILL FINISH THE BOOK! <3