Holy Brit

Thin places are both an ancient and a very relevant idea. A thin place is somewhere that heaven and earth seem almost to touch, where the divine reaches more closely into humanity. Sometimes thin places seem to be where lots of prayers have been said - people often comment about churches or pilgrimage sites feeling different. Sometimes thin places can be places of great beauty, places where we feel in touch with ourselves and the world. Sometimes thin places are unexpected, busy city streets or crowded trains, when for no apparent reason we feel suddenly closer to or more in touch with God.

As we are in the season of saints, this is All Saints Day (at least officially - many people celebrated it yesterday). Perhaps one definition of a Saint is that they are thin places in themselves - they are people who somehow reflect the light of Christ with a little more intensity than the rest of us.

This is reassuring but it is also a challenge as we consider our own sainthood. Perhaps no one will ever build a statue of us or name a church after us but we are called in our own lives to be thin places - people who reflect the love of Christ. People who are made holy by constant contact with God through prayer and sacrament.

If God can show up to us in all sorts of ways and places then we can be sure that we, ourselves, are both a way and a place in which God longs to shine. Whatever our negative views of ourselves, we can be sure that God sees in us a beauty and loveliness which goes beyond what we look like or what we do.