What Lies Within

By Andrea Lingle

There are moments in life when the edges of our three dimensional world blurs with the ineffable. While on any given Tuesday, it is easy to insist that the stoplight and coffee cup encapsulate all there is, there are times when the sacred whispers through the pines, beguiling the soul hinting that there is more which lies within. Pilgrims to the island of Iona talk about being immersed in a "thin space." A space wherein the Divine, embedded in all things, rises to the surface. The heart of the Divine can be heard echoing through the stones on the south shore, and the gleam of grace shines, enfloraled on the ancient wall of the nunnery. On the pilgrim way, the opacity of traffic and deadlines and schedules gives way to the clarity of what lies within.

What lies within? 

That is the question at the heart of the spiritual life. What lies within? Is there a God? What is the nature of God? Does God know me? For all of recorded history, people have been scribbling about these questions. We, as a species, seem to be compelled to wonder about them. I have not been able to corner an answer, but thin places and moments hold my gaze. Sacramental moments give me the courage to continue to ask these questions.

What lies within?

What makes a place thin or a moment sacred cannot be reduced to a formula—there is no vending machine of religious experience, but there are places where it is easier to encounter that which lies within. Where those places are depend on the context of the community within which the individual is embedded. For me the sacraments of the protestant church, eucharist and baptism; places of historical religious intention; ancient waterways; and the edges of life: birth and death, can be deeply sacred.

Those who usher in life and companion the dying inhabit spaces of great depth. There is a tradition in the birthing community of a woman standing at the side of a laboring woman for the sole purpose of offering the laborer support during the birthing process. These woman are called doulas, coming from the greek word, doulos, which translates as slave. A birth doula willingly relinquishes herself on behalf of the birthing mother. I have had a birth doula twice and served as one once. It is an aptly named experience as the soul of one woman is appropriated by the other. In childbirth, a woman is must walk through what must surely be death to bring forth life, and, for me, the hand of the partner and doula were not something external. Their life and grace were drained into me as I struggled to birth my children. The birthing room has stuck with me. It is a place on the edge of life where the grunts and cries of mothers and babies make space for the sacred. While thin spaces and moments are not the Divine itself, they are a hint. They are wall onto which the shadow of the Divine nature is cast.

And what shape do I see on the wall? What lies within? Surely it is love.