The Thin Space

On All Souls Day, many believe the boundary between earth and heaven grows thin. The ancient Celts actually called this space “thin times,” describing it as a time when the threshold between heaven and earth seemed easily crossed.

Another word for “thin space” or “thin time” is liminal space. Theologian Richard Rohr says of liminal space, “We are in liminal space whenever past, present, and future time come together in a full moment of readiness. We are in liminal space whenever the division between ‘right here’ and ‘over there’ is obliterated in our consciousness.”

As All Souls or All Saints Day 2025 approaches, I find myself longing for the liminal space.  I want to feel close to those who have gone before me.

During this season, I often think of my parents, wondering how close they are to me. I look for a connection between the past, the present, and the future – something that will remind me their spirits live on.

Remembering that the communion of saints surrounds us and upholds us happened for me on September 19, 2025.

On that day, Miller Houston Goff was born. He was one of the estimated 385,000 babies born into the world on that day, but for me, his grandmother, he was the one who drew our family closer to the thin space.

Miller Houston carries the name of his Miller great-grandparents and my father, whose middle name was Houston. He came into the world with the DNA of his parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and beyond.

As we held him for the first time, we looked to see if we could catch a glimpse of my Mom or Dad in his eyes, or if there might be a reflection of his Papa somewhere in his sweet face.

We looked at his hair color, skin tone, eye color, head shape, cheeks, and lips, trying to decide which family member he inherited each trait from. Holding Miller was a physical reminder that we cradle the love and struggles of past generations, along with the hopes and dreams of a new generation.

Birth and death remind us that we are a part of a Great Whole. Rohr says, “We carry the lived and the unlived lives of our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents as far back as DNA and genomes can trace them—which is pretty far back. It does take a village to create a person.”

In the weeks surrounding Miller’s birth, our family was also experiencing the sting of death. Miller’s dad, our son-in-law, was mourning the loss of his beloved Papa, who had just died a few weeks prior. On the same weekend that Miller was born, our daughter-in-law was walking her precious Granny home to be with God. The thin space was all around us.

Grief and joy. Death and birth. We have no choice but to experience the cycle of life. How we experience them is up to us. We can be vulnerable enough to lean into the thin spaces, or we can ignore them and miss the healing and joy they can bring.

Miller Houston is a beautiful baby boy with golden hair, deep blue eyes, and soft, rosy lips. When we hold him, he will curl up on our chest, breathe softly on our necks, and we never want to let him go.

In those moments, I feel not only his warm, soft body but the blessing he is to our family. Miller embodies for us the reality that we are connected to those who have gone before us and those who will come after us, reminding us that the connection really is only a thin space.

Wild Thing, You Make My Heart Sing

It was June, the beginning of my summer break from teaching, when I was perusing the clearance section of a local craft store and came across a $2 sign that caught my attention.

I wasn’t ready to think about the upcoming school year. My mind wanted a break from lesson plans and selecting songs for the holiday program, but my teacher’s planning mind is always just below the surface of my conscious thinking.

However, this sign spoke to me. My spiritual director’s brain turned on. It merged with my teacher brain, and I knew I had a theme for my classroom décor for the coming school year.

The spiritual director in me enjoys finding meaning in odd sayings and quotes. It likes to look deeper and pull out something to grasp and think about.

The sign said, “Wild thing, you make my heart sing.”

You may question my logic of finding depth in a quote from a song written in the 1960s. The “garage-rock” song, first recorded by the English rock band The Troggs, features a blend of influences from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, focusing on themes of desire and love.

Desire and romantic love were not part of my thought pattern when I saw this sign. Instead, I was picturing my classroom filled with wiggly, loud, crazy children who challenge and inspire me. That is where I was headed with this theme idea.

You see, my students challenge me. They challenge me to be creative and patient. They also inspire me. They inspire me to find ways to hold their attention and help them find joy in making music.

They are also wild. They struggle to sit still, to be quiet when I’m talking, and to sometimes get along with each other. But when they sing with their sweet, beautiful, young voices, that is when my heart sings.

For thirty years, my vocation was as a minister in the local church. During those years, I said that I would never teach school. I have learned never to say never.

Starting a new career as a music teacher, I felt a sense of grief about leaving church ministry. It has taken me a while, but now I realize that I never left ministry; only that the venue has changed.

Children are children, whether they are wearing their Sunday best or their school uniform. Children need nurturing and to feel loved, no matter their family’s faith practice. Children are "wild things" in school, at home, and at church. They are wild with energy to play and express themselves. They are wild with eagerness to learn and experience new things. They are wild with the desire to be loved and accepted for who God created them to be.

When I have the privilege of standing in front of all 300+ of them and leading them in singing a song like “We’re All In This Together,” it feels like a holy moment. That’s what makes my heart sing.

So, this year, my classroom is decorated with funny, silly monsters representing the wild things. These playful creatures will remind me to have fun with my students, to accept the messiness and craziness that goes along with living among the wild things. On the good days, my heart will sing, and on the not-so-good days, I will be reminded that wild things need my nurture, patience, and love to grow.

Growing Up on Columbus Circle

I grew up in Newnan, Georgia, on Columbus Circle. While our home and family certainly weren’t perfect, my four siblings and I were blessed with parents who loved and cared for us and each other. We had a house that was warm and safe. The property surrounding our home was family property dotted with open fields and a forest ripe for adventures. We lived a life filled with love and tender nurturing, a blessing  I don’t take for granted.

Since my parent’s deaths, my siblings and I have slowly and meticulously gone through the possessions in our childhood home. We have been going through this process in preparation for an estate sale.

For several reasons, it has taken us quite a while to do this. First, we weren’t emotionally prepared to do it and needed time to grieve our parent’s deaths. Secondly, we wanted to savor the process – to hold each item and remember. We wanted to remember the people in each picture. We wanted to clean out Daddy’s pockets and find each mint he placed in them – one for him and one for Mama. We wanted to search the nooks and crannies for lost jewelry and hearing aids. We wanted to thumb through their Bibles and read the notes written between the margins. And we wanted to make careful decisions about how we would honor them through this process.

This house was the only home I lived in from my birth into adulthood. My parents built this house and remained there until their deaths. It was home. Even after I had my own home, I still called this house “home.”

Going through the items from my childhood brought on another kind of grief. Finding long-forgotten items brought back floods of memories. Deciding what to throw away, what to keep, and what to sell created a different kind of emotion that I hadn’t prepared for.

When we had completed our task and drove away from the house, the realization set in that this house would never be the same. The possessions within it would go into new homes. The walls would no longer hold our pictures but would echo with the memories we made in that place. It was, admittedly, a hard goodbye.

My siblings and I have beautiful homes and families of our own. We love them and cherish the richness of the blessings they bring to us, but still, goodbye to our childhood home was a tough farewell.

My prayer this day is that the love and joy that was experienced in our home will settle deeply into that space on this earth – that it will soak into the soil and birth something beautiful in its place – that the goodness we experienced there will arise into the heavens with a resounding prayer of thanksgiving to God for the blessings of growing up on Columbus Circle.

Home

An ode to my childhood home

by Ruth Sprayberry DuCharme

The road home winds through pastures and towns,

Where tall pines congregate along my journey.

Cows graze and crows swoop,

Each taking their food from the land.

Rivers and creeks cross the path,

Flowing along the road on their journey to the sea.

Schools and shops dot the way

And mark the journey’s miles.

The destination is a simple brick house – our home,

Built with love and full of memories.

The home where babies first lay their heads.

The home where toddlers took their first steps and played under the willow tree.

The home where children explored and created adventures.

The home where teenagers argued and first expressed their unique personalities.

The home where college students came and went – free to live into adulthood.

The home where we returned with our spouses and children so they could experience the blessing of this warm place.

The home where we gathered in times of joy and sorrow – to sit on the porch and soak in each other’s presence and strength.

The home where things turned around, as they often do, and the nurtured ones became the nurturers, tending to the needs of parents who had aged way too soon -

Walking them home and holding their hand all the way.

The house stands empty now.

All that remains are the echoes of its memories – a shell of what it used to be.

But shells are beautiful in their own way.

They hold the sound of the sea

And as long as I live,

I believe this home will hold the echoes of me.