Salisbury Cathedral was, for me, a thin place. What is a thin place? This is a concept that I just learned of this evening at Emily’s (my wife’s) parents’ home fellowship Christmas party from a Newscastle medical student named Ellie. She asked if I had heard of whom the British refer to as Tom Wright (we Americans call him by his academic nom de plume, N. T. Wright). “Yep. He’s a bit of a controversial figure, isn’t he?” “Oh, he is? I’ve just heard his talk on the resurrection and thought it was fantastic.” The Bishop of Durham, however, wasn’t really our topic of conversation so much as he supplied the words for us to talk about Christian spirituality at certain locales, places which Ellie pointed out Wright refers to as “thin places.” Thin places are places at which the separation of earthly and spiritual is “thin.”
I was sharing with her how this past week I’ve visited Stonehenge and Salisbury Cathedral in the same afternoon. Some friends in American hyped up Stonehenge to me as a spiritual place where one encounters a certain amount of spiritual energy. Sorry to report that I found it rather unimpressive as a spiritual monument, but loved it nonetheless. Spiritual energy? Nope, just cold wind, runny nose, and tourists. After leaving the millenia-old enigmatic stones, we headed some ten miles south to Salisbury to see the towering spire of Salisbury Cathedral demonstrating its title as the tallest spire in the United Kingdom. This place was thin. Not to sound too dramatic but walking around inside I very nearly cried. Here stood an Ebenezer, a connexion through 750 years to the Medieval church. Our common connection: faith in Christ. This building placed my hand in the hand of the Medieval church. Me, a scrawny white American kid from West Virginia connected to the Christians of 13th century Wiltshire County England. It was too much. They loved Jesus. I love Jesus. The stones at Stonehenge, though impressive, diminish to a whisper at the sound of the glory of God sounding from the Gothic architecture of Salisbury.
[HT: Ellie, David Bole, Carmen Andres]
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