Speaking to the Soul: Meeting the One Who Transforms Us

Back on August 4, 2016 I read a meditation on line in Episcopal Cafe's section Speaking to the Soul. I saw it again today and, like then, was moved by the poetic language, and understanding of encountering the splendor of God exhibited by the author.  The author was on retreat in a desert setting in Colorado and said in part:

"We spent last week on retreat at Nada Carmelite Hermitage near Crestone, Colorado, a magical place at the threshold between very tall mountains and an enormous, high-altitude desert. There, sitting in silence, we were reduced to the basics of being human – the elemental dialogue with wind, sun, clouds and a vast, empty land.

Every morning I watched the sun rise, a gradual amassing of light from below the rim of the world. Turning the mountains to the east to silhouettes edged in salmon, then touching with incandescent orange whatever clouds sailed the sky, it would announce its approach. Finally, after crowning in the crook of a black treeless peak, it would be born, all red with new life. The world would fill with color.  ...

Throughout the week, in hundreds of moments like these, God caressed my hungry soul with mystery. I was reminded that there is no way of containing the Holy in the jars of human understanding. Capricious, prodigious, yet loving as only a mother can, God blasted away my presuppositions and made me new."

My experience with this sort of encounter of the splendor of God's creation occurred some years ago on the shore of Mount Desert Island in Acadia National Park . As I stood at Otter Cliffs looking down across huge rocks that spilled into the sea, saw the vast blue ocean spread out in front of me, heard the lapping of the waves far below I sensed a presence, a viewing of something beyond the normal ability to perceive. It wasn't until much later that I read about Thin Places. Those times and places where, as has been described by others, the veil between heaven and Earth parts or is thinner and one can glimpse ever so briefly that - I stop typing here and consider what word to put after the "that". God doesn't seem quite right because God is an individual triune entity. Land may surfice, but not quite. Probably, another dimension is as close as I can come to a description. A location that is just past our perception but that we are able to glimpse occasionally and ever so briefly if we are quiet, contemplative, and open to seeing, experiencing. 

I think that the author of the meditation was experiencing a Thin Place. A Thin Place is where ever we are sensative to God presence.      

The complete meditation from August 2016 can be found at:
Speaking to the Soul: Meeting the One Who Transforms Us