A THIN SPACE
As I write in mid-October, the leaves are changing color and falling. Already, the cherry trees are entirely bare — and the mornings are finally cool as the days shorten towards mid-winter. The kids are collecting buckeyes.
Late autumn is a time of letting go, of release, and as a result this world becomes weirdly thin, transparent to something more, something else. A different light comes through. From my childhood experience, I call this light “Hospice Light” because it hangs around the rooms of people who are close to dying, people who are letting themselves be carried by God. It is a thin space, a liminal time, and has a light-filled calm.
Delightfully, our church calendar is attuned to this massive seasonal change. Starting in November our worship, defined by our feasts and readings, becomes weirdly thin, porous, transparent to the spiritual reality of the heaven. In early November we celebrate All Saints’ and All Souls’ Day. We are thus made aware that our eucharistic Communion includes all the saints and sinners of our parish past, all gathering about the altar, ringing the church in rank on rank. It includes in fact all the saints from all times and places who are our sisters in Jesus and our brothers. These ancient saints, these enslaved spiritual forebears, these repentant sinners, all come to the Feast.
In the Church of England, there is a special name for this season, for the four weeks between All Saints Day and the start of Advent. They call it Kingdom Season, ending with the Feast of Christ the King. While we in the US don’t call it that, our worship is framed by many of same readings — readings which emphasize the end of time, the final judgement, and this created world being infused, invaded, by the next. Our hope is no longer in ourselves, but in God’s mercy.
This November, as the Kingdom comes close to us in our worship, I ask: what can we surrender, what can we die to, when can we let go of, so that, before we get to Hospice itself, we can become just a bit more transparent to this different light? What egoisms are we ready to let go of? What compulsive fears do we no longer need because they no longer serve us? What striving and resentments can we now see as self-centered and therefore giving no glory to God — even if God uses everything to God’s good purpose, as God does?
Each of us will come to this question in a different way, and each of us has to search our conscience. Or even better, we can talk to a good friend. We can ask them what they see us being hampered by, being driven by, being ruled so cruelly by? What fear, what egoism, what striving, what need, what compulsive behaviors? What would they love to see us let go of so that more of God could come through? How could they imagine us being more free? The answers, of our conscience or our friends, will be illuminating. Other people see us and often love us more than we see or love ourselves.
That kingdom of God, it is hanging about us. You can almost touch it. As we are graced to grow thin, like a half-leaved tree, it can shine straight through.
God bless.
Robert+
Rector of the Parish