The Gospel of John came to life last weekend when I attended a dramatic one man presentation at a Sugar Hill church. Brad Sherrill has memorized the entire text of John and his flawless performance is moving. It was as if St. John were telling me the story himself, and I could also imagine how the oral tradition was passed by believers through the early church before the New Testament was ever compiled.

After the first 15 chapters or so, I even forgot the amazing feat that Brad had memorized the whole thing, so convincingly conversational was his delivery. It was apparent that the message had saturated the man, as his compassionate gestures transcended acting.

I was most convicted by John's emphasis on Jesus' credentials, Jesus' radical call to "love one another" and his contemporaries' testimony: "I believe!" I had to blink away tears as I silently agreed.

As I walked out into the night air, fragrant from a late-blooming bush, the full moon lighting the way to the car, I was filled with the joy of faith and the thanksgiving of grace.

Coalait is a Gaelic word for a belief that permeates religious culture. It means "thin places," when the veil between the worlds of physical and spiritual is so transparent that physical beings can sense the existence of the world beyond. It's how I imagine ESP--extra sensory perception. I like to picture it as an icy lake or frozen pond where the sun has melted a patch that is watery and reflects the blue sky--the thinnest place.

The Holy Spirit accesses people to thin places. For some, those moments occur at shrines, in temples, cathedrals or other buildings reserved for religious activity. Sometimes, thinness happens during assemblies for praise and worship. Music is a powerful conductor to a thin place.

The beauty of natural places draws seekers to thin places such as the frozen landscape I described. Stone Henge, Niagara Falls, and Grand Canyon are famous for producing awe. Treasured places such as Taughannock Falls bring the presence of heaven closer to earth. Thin places can be found in books and film productions. It's wherever people experience the presence of God and are drawn to worship Him in their soul.

Prayer is a powerful coalait. Calling on Jesus thins me. Praying with expectancy generates an empowering of my faith. To say it and then believe it will happen emboldens my spirit with courage and merges mind and heart with will and action. Prayer pulls the totality of who I am into focus and the result is the movement of other worldly forces--the supernatural--within this worldly realm--the natural. Time touches eternity, and the point of contact is transparent.

Often we get stuck in our ways, rutted in predictability.
Unhappy. Unchildlike. Opaque.
We try to look out our windows and we see smudges all over them. Children leave their fingerprints all over the windows and walls. Children are dependent on others for a very long time; in some ways all their lives. Jesus says that unless I change and become like a child, born of water--the natural-- and spirit--the supernatural, I will not enter the door to His kingdom. Jesus celebrates dependence, incompetence, need, and my dirty fingers all over the door frame.

For a more eloquent perspective on thin places, read this.

Guilty! I know I am, and a Sunday morning incident confirmed it again. Near the end of our congregational gathering, we were asked to take a few moments to greet others. I reminisced a call to greeting in a candlelit midnight mass, sitting among college students. We simply grasped hands and exchanged smiles with one word, "Peace." It was all that needed to be said, and one word said it all. Now, over thirty years later, situated on the inside seat of a brightly lit pew, I turned and said hi (that's midwestern for "hey") to the only other people within speaking distance, a man and two male adolescents.

We exhausted the usual--hey, how are you, ready for school to start, or not, etc. The teens looked trapped and I can understand why they thought they had nothing in common with me. I'm a woman old enough to be their grandmother. Actually, if I had been 16, and my child had been 16, and their 16 year old progeny had adopted an eight year old, that makes me old enough to be their great-grandmother. (gasp)

In these awkward minutes, the intimacy level was not sufficient to inspire transparency. The clock lingered uncomfortably past pleasant acknowledgments and handshakes. We sighed, shuffled from one leg to the other, averting our eyes, and waited for the church leader to push the unpause button. I had already asked my favorite question, "what did you do for fun this summer?" and with an aversion to any further small talk, I was feeling stuck. Did I mention we were concluding a time of praise and worship. If ever I wanted to invoke apostle Paul's instructions in I Corinthians 14:34, it was now. The conversation ball was fumbling, so I chose to dribble.

In hindsight, I was impulsively hospitable--invited the family to Sunday dinner (midwestern for noon meal on the first day of the week), cranked homemade ice cream, and we happily played Scrabble. I volunteered my services as a tutor for the young men anxious about schoolwork and networked my team of virtual administrative assistants with the needs of the businessman. Life is a series of tests and temptations and fulfillment requires daily surrender to God's purpose and power. Instead of rising to the challenge to serve presented by this timeless opportunity to greet, I sunk beneath pond scum. I am disgusted with myself for what happened next.

I voiced a trivial opinion about the weather. And, even worse, a negative trivial opinion. I admit I'm rankled with people who criticize God's merciful weather patterns and make shallow, ungracious comments about rain, snow, wind, cloudiness and any other "inconvenient"atmospheric condition. Yes, in those stretchy minutes, captured between pews too tall for great grandmothers to escape, among men good and ready for the service to end and for lunch to be served, in that well intentioned, but forced black hole chitchat time cell with the spotlight causing me a hot flash, I whined, "August is not my favorite month. It is hot, humid, and buggy."
Gotcha! I heard Satan whisper.