When glioblastoma thrust me close to death I was intimately aware of the Divine. She was readily within reach; I touched the corner of Her cloak. Brain cancer had transported me to a \u201cthin place\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A thin place is a space (or moment) where the gap between the natural world and the transcendent becomes whisper fine, where the two worlds (nearly) touch. A space where the mystical becomes palpable and the bliss of the infinite is encountered.<\/span><\/p>\n Susan Cain in her book <\/span>Bittersweet<\/span><\/i><\/a> explains through the works of C.S. Lewis and Sufi teacher Dr. llewellyn Vaughan-Lee that we all have inconsolable longings for the divine; a desire to go \u201chome\u201d. I know exactly what the author is saying. Because \u201chome\u201d is not only where we\u2019re from and how that\u2019s shaped us into who we\u2019ve become. Home is also who we were before the world told us who we were supposed to be. Home is the diamond castle of the soul (as I reflected on in my <\/span>We Must Get Home<\/span><\/i><\/a> blogpost); our spiritual essence we long to become one with.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Susan Cain continues by expressing her \u201cbittersweet\u201d belief that this divinity we all long for can be just as much part of an atheist’s world as it can a believer\u2019s. It is present just as much in the ecstasy of musical immersion at your favorite concert, or in the magic of falling in love that reaches spaces in your soul you previously didn\u2019t know existed, or kissing your young child who coos their love to you.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Furthermore, Cain describes, these moments are transient. The concert finishes, falling in love shifts to routines of relationship (or divorce), children grow up and hurtle insults your way.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n So too, thin place moments are transient leaving us longing for more.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n As my cancer journey faded into the background, no longer center stage I have found myself longing for more moments of intimate divinity. I long to re-create those simple, visceral, transcendentally blissful times that had punctuated the trauma.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It was in those moments that I <\/span>knew, <\/span><\/i>in my heart and in my head, the meaning of life. It was love. Gutsy, messy, intimate love. That was what my soul longed for. It was the holy grail, the pearl, the secret of a satisfying life. Love. Simple. Complicated. Love. And this knowing made my heart sing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But, as the acuteness of illness transitioned to the wilderness aftermath and then, slowly, to remission and the emergence of a \u201cnew normal\u201d my memory of the thin place moments grew fuzzy.<\/span><\/p>\n How can I so easily forget?<\/span><\/i> I berated myself.<\/span><\/p>\n I wanted the thin moments back (of course without the traumatic uncertainty of acute brain cancer). Was I flawed to not be able to maintain my spiritual mountain top moments of epiphany?<\/span><\/p>\nInconsolable Longings<\/span><\/h2>\n
Remission<\/span><\/h2>\n
Ages and Stages<\/span><\/h2>\n