A Place Just Right with a nod to (the song) Simple Gifts

By Guest Blogger Jo

Patten Pond in the mist

 Susan has been talking about important resources for weathering crises, and she provides a powerful witness to doing so, even sharing frankly when she feels weather-beaten.  I may be stealing her thunder, since at this moment I’m at the kitchen table in the beloved Comeau Maine house, but I want to write about “thin places.”  This home is such a place for my husband and me.

And what is a thin place, you ask?  It really has nothing to do with Becky’s diet or the state of the home’s current occupants.  Thin places are where you just know there isn’t much space between you and God – that if you close your eyes, take a deep breath and reach up, your hand will touch the holy.  Especially in the hard times of our lives, we need such places. 

The first time I mentioned to Becky that this was a thin place for us, she said that it had probably been worn thin by many Comeau prayers.  We’ve added to that, for sure, but I think it was already a thin place, because it’s where prayers just seem to pour out in complete and easy faith that they are heard.  It’s where prayers don’t even need to be articulated, they exist in listening to the rain, watching the healing movement of water, inhaling clean air.  They are shared when elbows touch over a jigsaw puzzle, when we laugh until we can hardly breathe or we sit in complete silence and listen to all that is sacred.

We’ve been fortunate to experience a number of thin places: Canyon de Chelly in Arizona, Zion National Park in Utah, hiking trails in the Canadian Rockies, Assisi, England’s Lake District, and our beloved Capon in West Virginia.  Moments in these places reach into all the memories that nurture us, remind us of how God has blessed us, and restore our faith that all will indeed be well.

In the last couple years, we’ve had our share of bad stuff to deal with.  Our larger family has faced financial setbacks, cancer diagnoses, other health scares, divorce, severe depression, revelations of childhood sexual abuse, imprisonment, estrangement, job insecurity, the passing of good friends… It has often been frightening, almost always overwhelming.  You can make your own list. 

But thanks be that we are here today, in this place, and we are being restored.  Susan and her family will be here in a couple weeks, and they will be filled as well.  And in your life, in your times of need, may you find your own thin places.

 Jo