Rumors of Another World: Thin Places

       Phillip Yancey in his book, Rumors of Another World, argues that people tend to have experiences which suggest life is about more than meets the eye.  My years in ministry tell me he’s right. Repeatedly, people worry about their sanity as they secretly report to me encounters they had thought impossible.  They are sometimes surprised to discover that these spiritual experiences are not as rare as they thought.  They discover that others have also had brushes with another dimension.

       The people who tell me these stories are often high functioning and skeptical. They are disgusted by religious hucksterism.  Yet, they have seen Jesus in a German Cathedral, received angelic visitors in the night, and heard the sound of the heavenly host during communion.

       Celtic Christians speak of “thin places” where the wall dividing the spiritual and physical world seems paper thin.  Ten years ago when I was in Chiapas, Mexico I felt like I was in such a “thin place.”  A group of pastors asked a local missionary from the United States what could possibly account for the enormous wave of Christian conversion there.   He told us that people were hearing “rumors of another world.”  He said,   “Living here has dramatically changed my view of what is most deeply real.”

      Sociologists of religion speak of widespread experience which both haunts and fascinates.  Scientists like Albert Einstein insist such mystery is at the heart of all good science.  He writes, “He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause… and stand…in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”

      My undergraduate history professor was once asked if he believed in God.  He admitted, “My own sense is that there is something out there, I just choose not to think about it very much.”  Frederick Buechner says most of us ignore the evidence like that:  “We have seen more than we have let on, even to ourselves…We catch glimmers of what the mystics are blinded by…only we go on as though nothing happened.”

      What would it take for us to stop ignoring these persistent rumors?