Summer of Thin Spaces

a case for our willing surrender of disbelief

Hey, exciting news: The Cultivate Retreat with

Kimberly Phinney

and The Way Back to Ourselves is happening June 20-22. It’s virtual, which means you can tune in from anywhere in the world, and it will be recorded, which means you can access the videos afterward if you can’t tune in for whatever reason. I’ll be offering two sessions on crafting nonfiction book ideas and proposals, and there will be a whole slew of other AMAZING presenters. If you’re a faithful creative who could use a writerly community, practical next-steps, or excitement and encouragement around your work—COME.

How old was I? Six, maybe, or eight.

Our father was the forest ranger at the Michaud Farm ranger camp, the last stop on the Allagash Wilderness Waterway before the iconic 40-foot drop of Allagash Falls. I had a healthy respect for those falls; I’d skinny-dipped enough in that river to know that if you got too far from shore, the current would gladly pluck a little girl and sweep her right along to her death.

Michaud Farm is deep in the North Maine Woods, and I remember those weekend drives on long, bumping roads to get there. When we’d emerge on Sunday afternoon, my mother, sister, and I would cheer the moment the road finally turned from dirt to pavement, though I could feel my insides rattling around my ribcage long after the potholes subsided.

On those visits, there was no television, and there were hardly any people, either. So we made our own fun, as kids are wont to do. At least that’s what I suppose; it’s funny, but I don’t remember much about how we passed the time. I can see only tiny pictures, flashing like an old-time photo projector:

Click! The canoeists cooking frog legs over the fire.

Click! Rachel perched beside the river with a book in her lap.

Click! Young Dee, crouching in the long grass and slapping black flies off her neck.

There. It’s that last picture I keep coming back to, here in the ever-connected pathways of my mind that have little regard for linear time, for dull details.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

On that day, I remember creeping through yellow grass, probably hot on the trail of a frog or a snake or some other terrified creature. There was little wind to speak of; loosened strands of my ponytail stuck to my sweaty neck. My legs were dark from sun, and strong from play. When I got low to the earth, the grasses rose above my head, and I was hidden away, about as geographically alone as a young girl can be.

I can almost hear it now, if I close my eyes and suspend my own disbelief. It was a melody, floating through the meadow to commingle with the clicking and buzzing of wild insects. It was golden. Can a sound have color? This one did.

I remember that I perked up my ears, looked around for the source of these shimmering strands of refrain. Perhaps my father had fired up the pickup truck, and it was coming from the radio? I looked over toward the cabin. The truck sat still, engine cool. I looked over to the river, thinking that maybe it had come from some passing canoeists. But the water flowed unassumingly by, undisturbed. I settled back into the grasses, and let the melody settle over me.

Eventually, the notes rose above me and—like lines lifting from a sheet of music—were carried away, one by one. I abandoned my frog hunt and wandered back to the cabin. I found my parents inside and, when they asked me what I’d been up to, I told them simply, “I was just out playing in the long grass over there, and I think I heard an angel song.”

Why does this memory persist decades later, when so many others have melted away, lost to time where no one can ever, ever retrieve them?

Maybe because it was a brush with something just out of reach—something present, but not visible. Something real, but not tangible. Celtic tradition would call it a thin space, a moment where heaven grazes earth and our awareness of the divine is heightened.

Contrary to common thought that these so-called ‘thin spaces’ are rare and coincidental, I have this growing inkling that all of life is a thin space. That heaven isn’t moving toward and away from earth, sometimes nicking the atmosphere and making us look up and feel goosebumps on our arms, but that we are actually in intimate communion with God in every moment. Indeed, it’s not a question of God’s presence (which is constant), but rather a matter of our own awareness of it and our willingness to suspend our rather dreary disbelief.

As children, we believe indiscriminately. We haven’t learned the fine art of cynicism, or the science of self-consciousness. We are open to enchantment, wonder, mystery, awe. We are remarkable candidates for communing with God, because we aren’t bogged down with doubt yet. We are born believing in magic. We are conditioned to question anything we can’t explain.

But I believe—I really do—that at a certain point, we begin to doubt our doubts. We begin to look backward to the little children we once were and wonder if there is something for them to teach us, yet. As C.S. Lewis wrote to his goddaughter Lucy in his dedication of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe:

I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.

Every summer, I look at the wild and brilliant months ahead and ask, “What type of summer would I like this to be?”

And this year, I would like it to be the summer of thin spaces. The summer when I become old enough to start reading fairy tales again. The summer when the months stretch on and on because I’ve stepped beyond ordinary, linear time and am lost in a Narnia, of sorts, where anything can happen because I am ever and ever more aware that God is present, right now, and that heaven is at hand, even here on earth.

Would you like to join me?

---

Here is a poem I wrote in response to our five-year-old’s question of fairies last summer. It was first published in The Way Back to Ourselves literary journal.

HE ASKS ME IF FAIRIES ARE REAL

So yes:
what if fairies are real? 

Who am I 
to snub magic
before a crouching 
child, in whose hands
fistfuls of flowers and
moss come to 
dangle, an earthen offering
of shelter
for the lost nymphs
and dryads
of the forest
beside our home? 

Maybe childhood 
is not the lie
and adulthood
not the license to 
kill [wonder]

and though we’ve been taught
to look to those
before us, when at long last
our wizened heads become
the eldest, we’ll have no one 
to look to but the children
and then we’ll let them
mentor us 
in the ways of fantasy
and solemn
compassion

and in this fashion
we’ll return to Eden,
to the truest 
creation
where reason and 
the science of logic
are just outdated currencies
of a bygone era
and where those who can still be enchanted
will reign. 

So yes:
who am I to say
whether fairies are real? 

Did this post mean something to you? I drink plenty of coffee, so I don’t need a ‘buy me a coffee’ button, but I’m pursuing my Master of Divinity at Pillar Seminary, and if you’d like to toss a dollar or two into the tip jar, it will help with tuition!