The final few days of my mom's life passed at hospice among her children and dearest friend or two. One friend also was minister who spoke of thin places in life when the gap between here and The Beyond is thinner than the push and pull of everyday consumer life of maximizing utility or pleasure or whatever else structures one's decisions and worldview. At places of new life, recovered life, near death and earthly death the humdrum fades and the Being of now fills the space and time. What seems to matter most is altogether different to the yardstick we use in everyday routines and ruts we find ourselves in. Rather than seek other's approval or avoid disapproval, hungering for respect by peers and recognition by our social betters, instead our appetites are for beauty and relationship with the Righteous and Forever, the great Being that we find ourselves part of; part of all this time but too preoccupied in normal waking consciousness to know.
At the memorial service just a week later my cousin talked of God winks. Incidental signs or even more direct communication that touch our hearts; that we take confirmation and comfort in; that seem to be a nod or indicator of God taking notice of our search for meaning and desire for hints of the Creator. Such times prepare our hearts for the interchange with things bigger than ourselves, things eternal, things ever present but which we are usually too preoccupied to see or hear or even know to look for.
Once having felt these thin places and God winks it becomes easier to include this in the quiet time at start or finish of one's day; a time to drop the chatter of the 'monkey mind' (to borrow an image from Buddhist tradition of meditation distractedness) in order to just be; not do or make plans to do; just be without intention, direction, goal, striving or planning to strive. That moment, long or short, at twilight or in the rush of mid-day, is something like the top of the roller coaster, when the train has climbed to a peak and seems about to come to full stop before cresting the peak and gathering momentum in the plunge down and around the course. Besides that image of motion ceasing, the other image to describe the quiet place of the heart embracing God's creation is the experience of learning to speak a foreign language: first you rely on your native language by translating to and fro, tiring your mind in the process. But by and by as you pick up fluency and speed and stop stumbling over the details as you go with the flow and gist of communications, then the experience is immersive and the mother language can cease as the foreign language takes on the weight of your meanings, messages, and purposes. The same can be said about taking a moment or long pause to *be* with God; not doing, planning, reciting, praising, wrestling with God's Word, but just being present. That is the thrum of righteousness when striving has no place; where the race has already been run; where the sweetness and wonder are there to be savored. There is no need for words or actions, none of the mother language of ordinary life is needed because the foreign language, God's language of IS, is all embracing and all sufficient.
