Our reading this morning is from one of my favorite authors, Annie Dillard. I think it's a reading about the fickleness of grace.

The secret of seeing is, then, the pearl of great price. If I thought he could teach me the secret, I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts after any lunatic at all. But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sought. The literature of illumination reveals this above all: Although it comes to those who wait for it, it is always, even to the most practiced and adept a gift and a total surprise. I return from one walk knowing where the killdeer nests in the field by the creek and the hour the laurel blooms. I return from the same walk a day later scarcely knowing my own name. Litanies hum in my ears; my tongue flaps in my mouth 'halleluiah.' I cannot cause light; the most in can do is try to put myself in its path. It is possible in deep space to sail on solar wind. Light has force. You rig a giant sail and you go. The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind. Hone and spread your spirit 'til you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff.

Last year, at Thanksgiving, Chris and I shared our holiday meal with some dear friends of ours in New York City. We all like to cook, so we got up early in the morning and went out to the markets and filled our baskets with all the delights of the city and then came home and spent the whole day preparing a sumptuous meal. By late afternoon, Thanksgiving dinner was ready and we all sat down to a meal of many courses, accompanied by several bottles of wine.

After what seemed like hours of talking and eating, we all pushed back from the table, full, taking a pause before dessert and one person asked if we could go around the table and share what it was we were thankful for. And so, we began, each person in his or her turn, telling a little bit about what we are grateful for: family, friends, fulfilling work. When the circle finally came 'round to me, I paused for awhile, searching my heart. Of course I have much to be thankful for. My life overflows with blessings. But in that moment I honestly could not find an ounce of gratitude in my heart. I was ashamed to admit it then, and I'm ashamed to admit it now, but it was what was true. Sometimes, for whatever reason, we are unable to muster the response to life that it deserves. Call it sadness; call it depression. On that day for me it felt like a numbness to life.

The very next day, still in that numb place, I sat at a cafe and at the table next to me were a mother and her teenage son. I always find it interesting to watch parents and their teenagers interact, the parent trying so hard to strike a balance between showing love and giving some space. The self-conscious teen trying to push away but stumbling sometimes knowing they still need help. It's always a poignant dance. So I watched the mother and her son for a moment as they ate cupcakes at the cafe. At one point I saw the boy take his cupcake and was ready to pop it in his mouth, and I saw his mouth open ready to take a big bite, and in the next moment I saw his mouth soften. "Do you want a bite of my cupcake, Mom?" He playfully dangled it in front of her as she took her bite.

Now my mother happens to be here this morning. I'll bet she would attest, if you asked her, that while on the whole I might have been a considerate child, I'm pretty sure I never offered her my desert. Usually I'd stare at her plate asking, "You gonna' finish that, Mom?" So I was taken aback by this teenager's thoughtfulness. In fact I was deeply moved by it that day. I can't explain it but in that moment, my hardness of heart, the numbness that I had felt, evaporated and feeling returned to me. Suddenly I felt as though my life and the world were suffused again with love and with grace. All because of one intimate gesture between a mother and her son.

Emerson said "Our vice is habitual, but our faith comes in moments, in glimpses. Yet," he said "there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all the other experiences." This was one of those experiences for me -- a moment of grace that shook me out of what had become a habituated numbness, an ingratitude. A moment that reminded me that miracles abound and that grace flows around us and among us, and through us and that most of the time we never see it. Most of the time it passes us by.

The ancient Celts believed, as Emerson did, that grace came in moments, but instead of speaking about time they spoke of places. They believed that there were special places where grace particularly abounded, where a sense of mystery and wonder seemed present. They called these places the "thin places," thin because in these locations somehow the membrane separating the ordinary realm from the sacred realm was fine, was porous, was permeable. Thin places. Places where the sacred dimension of our lives was just palpable.

For the ancients, the thin places were often mountaintops or coastlines or caves, places where sky met earth, sea met land, the world above met the world below. In other words, they were liminal spaces, boundary zones between one realm and another. Wherever they were when the Celts identified these places, they would build shrines and cairns and they would mark them as holy places.

I wonder if you know a thin place for you, if there is a place for you that seems more suffused with grace than others. A favorite hike, a small patch of green and quiet in the busy city. A cathedral. Your grandmother's front porch. For me and, I know, for some of you, this place is a thin place, a place where the sacred and the ordinary come together.

The problem that I'm raising here today, though, is a timeless spiritual problem and a constant struggle in the spiritual life. The problem is this: the problem is that grace is fickle, that revelation is ephemeral. It's hit and miss. Spirituality is a game of catch as catch can, and we're always trying to catch up. Must we all just throw our hands up and accept that grace will come only as a gift, or can we do something about it? Is there a way to cultivate a sense, an affinity, for the sacred? I think the answer is partly yes, and maybe mostly no. But there are a few things that we can do and I want to share them with you this morning.

The first thing that we must have if we are to make more of the thick places thin in our lives, if we are to experience a sense of the sacred, is that we need to have a certain kind of faith. I think it's the kind of faith that was summed up in our processional hymn this morning that the Jubilee Singers sang with us. You know, we can be the kind of people who say 'over my head I hear singing in the air,' right? And there's a little bit of a leap we have to take, however, to go from 'over my head I hear singing in the air,' to the next conclusion which is 'there must be a God somewhere.' That leap is what we need to be able to take if we are to experience a sense of the sacred in the world.

We don't have to believe that there necessarily is a God somewhere; we have to believe that the world is indeed infused with a grace, so that if we hear the singing in the air and we rule out that it's the Jubilee Singers, or the All Souls Choir, or our partner humming in the shower, then we take that leap and we say there must be a God somewhere. There must be grace somewhere. Unless we're willing to take that leap, we won't find grace. If we don't believe it exists, we won't find it. I know I always come up against a barrier there, because I can't talk anyone into believing something. I can only invite you into that belief. But faith is the first thing.

The second is that to notice the gracious in the world takes a certain kind of attention to details. I believe that grace is found in the details. Annie Dillard says, this morning, "the secret of seeing is the pearl of great price. If I thought he could teach me the secret of seeing, I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts after any lunatic at all." She's trying to figure out why sometimes she goes on a walk and she sees the birds and the bees and sometimes she goes on a walk and she feels filled up with a sense of halleluiah. She suggests that it's in the quality of our attention to the details that we find grace.

I'm reminded of that great character in Alice Walker's novel, The Color Purple, Sug. Sug and her friend are talking about grace and Sug says, 'you know, if you're walking in a field and you just pass right by the color purple without noticing,' she said -- and forgive my language here, I'm quoting her, -- "That pisses God off." Noticing. Noticing the color purple, the moments of grace in our lives. Only if we take the time to notice, cultivate the practice of attention, will we make some of those thick places thin.

The final thing I want to suggest this morning as we clumsily search for more graciousness in our lives is that we not be afraid to seek out teachers in this work. None of us needs to be a seeker of grace on our own. Here's a story about this.

Not long ago I sat down with a dear friend who is pregnant. She was some months into her pregnancy and showing quite a bit so, as I looked at her belly I knew intellectually that there was a child inside. But you know how sometimes you know something, but you don't really know something? Well, I knew that in seven weeks my friend would give birth, but I didn't really get the miracle that was going on inside of her belly. Then my friend took my hand and guided it to a particular place, a corner of her belly. The place where she put my hand seemed even more stretched than the rest of the belly, stretched so thin it was almost translucent, light illuminating her cells and blood vessels. And when she put my hand on that place, when I touched it, I distinctly felt the bone of another human being. "It's her heel," she said, and sure enough, I could feel the infant's heel protruding from her mother's spherical belly. When I saw the thin place and felt the heel, then I understood the miracle. Then all the dimensions were revealed to me. So let us find the people who can take our hands and place them on those parts that can reveal to us the graciousness and the wonder of life.

So noticing, finding a teacher and, as I said, undergirding it all, the sine qua non, the thing I can't talk you into but that you need to discover for yourself, is the faith.

Friends, if today is any indication, then the summer is finally upon us. It's hot up here in a black robe. Summer is often thought of as the season of grace. The humidity will begin to slow us down. The streets will thin out as college students and congressional aides go home. Perhaps we will have a little time to pause and seek out the thin places in this thick town. Perhaps we will notice the color purple. Perhaps it will be finally quiet enough for us to hear the singing in the air. Perhaps in the times we spend with loved ones we can find a teacher or two to point us toward grace, to restore to us the fullness of life. That is my prayer for you this summer, and always.

Amen.