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There is a Celtic tradition that heaven and earth are but three feet apart, and in some places--the "thin places"--the distance is even narrower. A thin place, according to the Celts, is a space where the veil that separates heaven and earth can be lifted and one may glimpse into the magnificence and wonder of the presence of God. In a thin place, one writer observed, "there is an immediacy of experience where words of faith become words of life."
Where in your world have you perceived a "thin place"? A hallowed space and time where, for a moment, heaven and earth--even now, in anticipation of the day when all things under earth and heaven shall be reconciled--are one. Is it in the woods, at the ocean, or on the Golden State Freeway at Exit 138? Is it, perhaps, not a place at all, but an occurrence or a person?
On a hilltop overlooking downtown Los Angeles is Elysian Park; within the confines of Elysian Park is Chavez Ravine, home to Dodgers Stadium. Dodgers Stadium, like other renown baseball fields, is cloistered amid the din of urban life. It is here where, metaphorically speaking, I sense a thin place. For within this unlikely bucolic setting, set within the noisy metropolis, a game is played that transcends its environs, transcends space and time.
Baseball, in Chavez Ravine and elsewhere, is unconfined by space. The left and right field foul lines run the depth of the field at a right angle from home plate, where they ultimately meet the foul poles and where the boundaries of the field turn heavenward. In addition, a ball batted over the outfield wall and "out of the park"--out of bounds in any other sport--is prized. Baseball, in Chavez Ravine and elsewhere, is unconstrained by time. There is no clock in baseball; in fact, as if in spite of the clock and time itself, the game of baseball moves around the bases counterclockwise. A baseball game could, in theory, extend endlessly into extra innings.
Yet within the divinely-appointed framework of space and time that is reflected in the ballpark, there unfolds a very familiar and a very human narrative. Each game of baseball is an unfolding and unanticipated, sometimes indeed chaotic, drama of redemption--of reconciliation--a mythic story of leaving and returning home to the family's embrace. Ah, author Roger Angell once suggested, "Baseball seems to have been invented solely for the purpose of explaining all other things in life." I invite you to reflect on the thin places in your own life. Where's a place that refreshes your spirit and opens the door to the threshold of the sacred, if only in metaphor? What would it take to return to this place daily in spirit, if not in body? Who would you have to be to become a "thin place"--where the veil that separates heaven and earth can be lifted and one may glimpse into the magnificence and wonder of the presence of God? |
