Thin Places in the New York Times!

As you may know, I’m in the middle of a series of blog posts focusing on thin places. I’m trying to examine the concept of thin places from the point of view of biblical theology. So, as you might expect, I have thin places on my mind.

How surprised I was to see that thin places have also been on the mind of the New York Times. One of my readers added a comment (thanks Rhstigge!) alerting me to the article that I would probably have found on my own, but you never know. The title of the article as it appeared on my Kindle is “Thin Places, Where We Are Jolted Out of Old Ways of Seeing the World.” The online version of the Times has changed it to “Where Heaven and Earth Come Closer.”

The article on thin places was written by Eric Weiner, author of the bestselling The Geography of Bliss and, most recently, Man Seeks God: My Flirtations with the Divine. Weiner describes himself as “a former foreign correspondent for NPR, a philosophical traveler—and recovering malcontent.” He adds, “For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a restless soul. When I was five years old, I ran away from home, determined to find what wonders awaited me around the corner. I’ve been looking ever since.” In terms of faith, Weiner is a seeker. He’s also an engaging and delightful writer.

I highly recommend that you read “Where Heaven and Earth Come Closer,” not because I agree with everything Weiner says, but because his ideas are well worth serious consideration. His discussion of thin places also helps to set up my effort to address them from a biblical perspective. There are many other perspectives on thin places, of course, including Weiner’s. But Christians, it seems to me, should always base their understanding of spiritual reality on biblical theology.

Though I encourage you to read all of Weiner’s article, I will print a few excerpts and add some brief comments of my own:

I’m drawn to places that beguile and inspire, sedate and stir, places where, for a few blissful moments I loosen my death grip on life, and can breathe again. It turns out these destinations have a name: thin places.

Notice that Weiner can talk about thin places here without reference to God (or the divine). Thin places are identified by their impact on a person’s feelings and experiences.

[Thin places] are locales where the distance between heaven and earth collapses and we’re able to catch glimpses of the divine, or the transcendent or, as I like to think of it, the Infinite Whatever.

This is a fairly classic definition of thin places, though Christians tend not to speak of God as “the Infinite Whatever.” I appreciate Weiner’s honesty here.

Travel to thin places does not necessarily lead to anything as grandiose as a “spiritual breakthrough,” whatever that means, but it does disorient. It confuses. We lose our bearings, and find new ones. Or not. Either way, we are jolted out of old ways of seeing the world, and therein lies the transformative magic of travel.

Notice that thin places, according to Weiner, are disorienting and not just comforting.  When we are in them, we “are jolted out of old ways of seeing the world.” So, a thin place isn’t simply a cozy hug from God, according to Weiner. If you think about some of the thin places we’d examined so far, like Mt. Sinai, you’d have to agree with Weiner’s point.

So what exactly makes a place thin? It’s easier to say what a thin place is not. A thin place is not necessarily a tranquil place, or a fun one, or even a beautiful one, though it may be all of those things too. Disney World is not a thin place. Nor is Cancún. Thin places relax us, yes, but they also transform us — or, more accurately, unmask us. In thin places, we become our more essential selves.

Weiner doesn’t answer his own question here: So what exactly makes a place thin? Rather, he describes characteristics of thin places and their effect on us. He hasn’t yet tried to explain why this happens. Still, he is clear that thin places do more than simply make us feel good.

A park or even a city square can be a thin place. So can an airport. I love airports. I love their self-contained, hermetic quality, and the way they make me feel that I am floating, suspended between coming and going.

Here, Weiner parts company from what I have found to be a common understanding of thin places, which almost always sees them as set apart, as places of quiet and solitude. Notice that, for Weiner, what makes a place thin seems to be his experience in that place. There is nothing essential about the space that makes it thin.

You don’t plan a trip to a thin place; you stumble upon one. . . . To some extent, thinness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Or, to put it another way: One person’s thin place is another’s thick one.

It appears that, for Weiner, no places are essentially thin. No places are necessarily thick. Thus, there really aren’t thin places in some sort of static way. (This sounds rather like what we saw concerning the pillars and the tabernacle in Exodus.)

Yet, ultimately, an inherent contradiction trips up any spiritual walkabout: The divine supposedly transcends time and space, yet we seek it in very specific places and at very specific times. If God (however defined) is everywhere and “everywhen,” as the Australian aboriginals put it so wonderfully, then why are some places thin and others not? Why isn’t the whole world thin?

Maybe it is but we’re too thick to recognize it. Maybe thin places offer glimpses not of heaven but of earth as it really is, unencumbered. Unmasked.

This is worth some serious thought. In many ways, I think Weiner approaches a biblical theology of thin places. Of course, God could always decide to make himself known more strikingly in a particular location (such as the temple in Jerusalem). But if God is everywhere, then perhaps thin places are not places where God is nearer to us. Rather, they may be places were we are able to perceive what is true always and everywhere. Maybe we become less thick and more attentive to God’s presence, which turns out always to be with us.