(Gwen and I hiked on top—on the Crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains on 9/2/26. This “thin space” is one of our favorites—probably the most thin space I’ve entered into in a long while. I was in need of this kind of space—so we cancelled our plans and went up by ourselves; packed our lunch and went into the thin space of Black Balsam Knob. It did not disapppoint. I came home more myself; more relaxed and felt more alive—all benefits of entering a thin space.)

Thin Spaces Across Religious Traditions

It’s important to realize that Americans spend 93% of their lives inside buildings of office, home, church and shopping. That leaves 7% of our time and energy to go into the natural world and let the natural world “do” in us what only the natural world can do—help us stay alive; be healthy; be our true selves—rooted in the Earth; grounded as human beings and not morphing into machines. (Read Inside Epidemic and read my former posts for statistics and studies and benefits of moving outside rather than being inside so, so much.

We are not the first to need outside spaces to thrive and to live life in a sustainable and healthy way. History reveals the ways we have searched for such spaces and so do our religions.

If you’ve not been following me for a while or are new to me on Substack, please go back and read the entries that precede this one to get the background and where I am laying the foundation “thin spaces.”

Here’s an overview of comparative religions and how the concept of “thin space” was used, known and practiced through the years.

Judaism

· The Hebrew Scriptures repeatedly connect encounters with God to particular places in the natural world.

· Wilderness, mountains, rivers, stones, trees, and land become settings of revelation.

· Moses encounters God at the burning bush and later on Mount Sinai.

· Jacob awakens in the wilderness and declares, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it.” (See my former articles).

· Practices such as Sabbath, prayer, pilgrimage, blessing, and remembrance cultivate awareness of God’s presence.

· Thin-space connection: Ordinary ground can suddenly be recognized as holy ground.

Christianity

· Christianity inherits this biblical understanding of creation as a place of divine encounter.

· Jesus repeatedly withdraws to mountains, wilderness, gardens, lakeshores, and solitary places.

· Celtic Christianity especially emphasized encountering God through creation.

· Monasteries and pilgrimage sites often developed in remote landscapes—along coastlines, on islands, in forests, and among mountains.

· Contemplation, silence, prayer, pilgrimage, and sacramental practices cultivate attentiveness.

· Thin-space connection: Creation can become a portal through which we awaken to divine presence.

Islam

· Creation is filled with āyāt—signs pointing toward Allah.

· Desert, mountains, sky, stars, water, and the rhythms of creation invite remembrance of the Creator.

· Mecca and Medina hold particular sacred significance.

· Prayer, pilgrimage, fasting, dhikr (remembrance), and contemplation cultivate awareness of God’s nearness.

· Thin-space connection: The natural world becomes a field of signs that awaken the human heart to the Creator.

Hinduism

· Hindu spirituality has the concept of tirtha—a “crossing place.”

· A tirtha is a place where passage between ordinary and sacred reality becomes particularly accessible.

· Rivers—especially the Ganges—mountains, forests, caves, and pilgrimage sites carry sacred significance.

· Pilgrimage, meditation, yoga, bathing, and ritual help the pilgrim enter more deeply into sacred reality.

· Thin-space connection: Certain places function as crossing points or thresholds into sacred awareness.

Buddhism

· Buddhism approaches this somewhat differently, emphasizing awakening and awareness rather than encounter with a Creator.

· Mountains, forests, monasteries, gardens, and places of solitude have historically supported spiritual practice.

· Meditation, mindfulness, silence, and walking cultivate presence.

· The transformation often occurs not because the place itself has changed, but because our awareness has changed.

· Thin-space connection: A place can help us awaken to what has been present all along.

Indigenous and Native Spiritualities

· These traditions are extraordinarily diverse and should not be treated as one religion.

· Yet many Indigenous traditions understand human beings as existing in relationship with land rather than apart from it.

· Mountains, rivers, animals, ancestral lands, and particular landscapes may carry profound spiritual significance.

· Ceremony, story, gratitude, and relationship with the land cultivate belonging.

· The sacred is often not confined to a religious building or institution.

· Thin-space connection: Sacredness emerges through relationship—with land, creatures, ancestors, community, and the larger living world.

What Do These Traditions Suggest?

· Place matters.

· The natural world matters.

· Attention matters.

· Silence and contemplation matter.

· Pilgrimage and movement matter.

· Sacred encounter is not confined to religious buildings.

· The spiritual journey often involves becoming more awake to what is already here.

People share more than we might think and by reading this brief overview of comparative religions and their understanding, I hope you might feel more connected; more linked and more family than perhaps before.

So given this background, let’s review again what a “thin space” is…

A working definition:

“A thin space is a place or moment where the boundary between the visible and invisible, the material and spiritual, seems unusually transparent. It may not be that God becomes more present there, but that we become more present to God.”

My Search for Thin Spaces

My own spiritual formation has been deeply formed by a sense of place, landscape and an appreciation of beauty in various forms. It was my father who showed me the thin spaces of water, woods and wilderness and it was in these specific places and landscapes that I felt I really “had” my Dad with me.

In those spaces, my Dad was more himself; more relaxed; and more “with” me than any other place on earth or at any other time in our entire lives. I find myself going back into my mind and heart now recalling those times; savoring those experiences and nurturing more of what was actually happening in those places and spaces.

In my own fathering, I believe I did much of the same. I ushered my children into thin spaces of nature and beauty. I exposed them to hiking and camping. We traveled out west as a family and fell in love with the landscapes of big sky; open spaces and natural wonder. When my boys each turned thirteen, I took each one to a different “thin space” to be together in the wilderness: Grand Canyon, Rocky Mountains, Yosemite and the waters of Mexico. Each trip was a pilgrimage for them. Each trip was an epic experience of using the natural world to tell them lessons about manhood.

Searching for Thin Spaces in Poetry

My poems reflects my own growing awareness in the search for thin spaces. There’s much in this poem to savor and use in one’s own journey of awareness and awakening; of noticing and nurturing the gifts of thin spaces. Poetry is my way of inviting you, as the reader of my poems into my own world; my own heart; my own shared life experience through some brief words mined out of the gold of my heart.

Poetry is the ideal portal to express thin spaces. In poetry, we are not held to a linear understanding. We use fewer words; deeper expressions; more personal confessions and hold a small light for the readers of the poems to see their own thin spaces.

Poetry allows nuance, metaphor, rhythm and images to convey the mystery and sacredness of these thin spaces and faces.

My. essays are free to all subscribers of my Substack. But, the poems are not. My poems are my most personal, vulnerable and transparent attempts to mark my world; mine my heart and make a public offering of my own journey. I’d so appreciate your upgrading to support my work. You can do that here:

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Nearly all of my mentors are on the other side now. In learning about the passing of Wendell Berry, I am left with the oddest of feelings. I woke up recalling the infamous scene in the 1992 movie, Last of the Mohicans.

At the end of The Last of the Mohicans, Chingachgook. a brave Native American warrior mourns his son, Uncas, who has been killed trying to rescue Alice, a fair skin white woman who was taken hostage by another tribe. Standing on a mountain overlooking the vast wilderness (which was filmed in Western North Carolina), he offers a prayer to the Great Spirit.

He asks that Uncas be welcomed at the council fire of his people—the ancestors who have already died. Then he asks them to wait patiently for him, and for death to bring him to them quickly. His grief leads to these words:

“For they are all there but one—I, Chingachgook—Last of the Mohicans.”

It’s how I feel these days as I age into a new and stark season without my mentors—yet not feeling at all ready for them to depart.

I still need their voices. I need their input in my life. I mourn the absence of these wise souls in a time it seems we most need them. It is a great and profound loss to lose someone who mentored you; who showed you the way forward; who saw you, loved you and helped you.

I have been most fortunate to have had wonderful mentors. Some in the flesh; some in their books; some in their legacies of poems. They saw me. They somehow knew me. They also knew the journey—and the journey is what we spoke of when we were together.

Yet still, I need a guide at 72 years of age. Doesn’t that sound strange? You’d think at my age, I might outgrow this need. But I have not and I will not. To admit this need is to admit my own humanity and my own place on the planet.

Don’t we all need a guide?

I wrote a poem I want to share with you about this inner emptiness. It is really a prayer to my own “Great Spirit” as Chingachogook prayed to his.

My editor said I should submit this poem to Spiritual Directors International—as it voices the need for a spiritual director. We’ll see.

I was the kind of man that when I heard about “mentors”—I instantly knew that I needed one; needed to do everything possible to find one and then hold on to them as long as I possibly could.

Now, I am surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses these days in realizing that most of these voices have left this earth. But in some strange way, I still feel their presence through their wisdom, books and poems. What has not left is my need of a hand, a voice, a companion to walk with me. Can you relate in some way? I think many of you can.

As I send this on to you today, I hope this falls in a tender space in you as you read these words of my poem.

Stephen

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Thin Spaces Are Already Here

Thin spaces are not finally about geography, landscapes, sunsets, or mountain vistas. We do not arrive at them after a long search. Thin spaces are all around us—all the time.

What is missing is not the thin space. What is missing is our awareness.

We move fast. We multitask. We stay busy. We are so obsessed with being connected that we miss what is already around us—already present, already here.

Thin spaces are about awareness. Experiencing them means learning to see what has always been before our eyes. We need not struggle to reach a rare spiritual destination that writers have described, artists have painted, and poets have praised. We need to awaken to the sacredness of the world we already inhabit.

A Culture Starved for Awe

Spiritual wonder begins with spontaneous awe. This is our predicament as modern people: we are more awed by machines than by beauty. Shaped by a culture fixated on speed, addicted to success, and engrossed in information, we are starved for awe.

Awe is what we experience when we cannot understand, explain, or fully grasp what is before us. Awe exceeds us. When it surfaces in the heart, we find ourselves in a thin space.

Awe is more than seeing something beautiful. A sunset can be beautiful, as can a newborn baby or a field of sunflowers blossoming on a hot July day. But awe exceeds our frame of reference. Words fail. Silence rises. The mind quiets. An encounter is happening.

Words fail. Silence rises. The mind quiets. An encounter is happening.

The Thinning of the Self

This is what it means to experience a thin space. We lose our footing in rationality, facts, and logic—not because they are unimportant, but because they cannot contain the whole encounter. Something bypasses our explanations and moves the human heart. This is part of the glory of being human.

Awe and thin spaces may be among the experiences that distinguish human beings from every other form of created life. In this age of artificial intelligence, they may offer the hope we need—a way of preserving our humanity before we surrender it altogether.

Thin spaces also thin the human ego. When awe fills us, the illusions of our importance, the imagined size of our lives, and the inflation of our egos begin to recede. A thin space reminds us that we are small—that we are dust. This is why we need such moments now: they right-size our lives and restore perspective.

Thin spaces right-size our lives.

Beyond Words and Into Mystery

Thin spaces usher us into a place where our words are few and our groans are deep. We move beyond explanation toward mystery.

They also awaken us to the inner landscape of the soul. Belden C. Lane reminds us that wilderness can bring neglected things to consciousness and can drive us beyond language into silence. His work suggests that the things that do not flatter our importance may, in the end, help save us. In thin spaces, words give way to silence, presence, and awe.

Thin spaces are thresholds. We cross into uncharted territory and move closer to the edge of our humanity—to the place where we behold the sacred.

The Sacred in Ordinary Life

This can happen as we watch bluebirds devote themselves to their fledglings; as a houseplant comes back to life because we finally care for what we had neglected; or as light pierces the canopy of treetops and falls upon the forest trail around us.

Thin spaces offer a different currency from the one we are accustomed to using. We cannot buy them. They are not manufactured, packaged, or available for export. Our awareness of them grows through the practice of contemplation.

Contemplation: The Practice of Awe

Contemplation is among the highest expressions of our intellectual and spiritual lives. Noticing thin spaces is not about IQ, EQ, or an Enneagram number. It is about learning to see the world in a different way—with different eyes and a different cadence.

Contemplation, in short, is spiritual wonder. It is the practice of awe and an awakening to the spiritual world that is all around us—in every form of life, including rock, flesh, feather, and fur.

Contemplation begins with a question: “What am I invited to learn here; see here; experience here?”

The Beginning of Noticing

This question marks the beginning of awareness. Thin spaces become thin to us when we begin to notice rather than rush through. They are about consciousness—about becoming awake to what is here.

· What am I aware of?

· What is happening here?

· What is asking for my attention?

· Who is asking for my attention?

I am writing about thin spaces as you can see. All of my essays are available to all subscribers and I am eager and glad to share with you. But my poems are on another level and require you to step up your subscription. My poems are the most vulnerable, most real and most transparent way I am expressing myself —at my “tender age.” So your stepping up is a way to cheer me on and who doesn’t need to be cheered on! Thank you for choosing to do that!

Also, at the end of this substack, I am choosing to put an entire section of references, books, poems, Scriptures that I am using to write these essays and poems. You also need to be an upgraded subscriber to access that. Just scroll down past the poem to see how I’ve done this as a way to encourage you to read along with me.

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( I took this image as I was hiking up along the Blue Ridge Parkway this week. I noticed all the shades of green. I noticed the layers and textures. It became a “thin space” for me.)

Understanding Thin Space

The phrase thin space describes a place or moment in which the boundary between the visible and invisible, the material and spiritual, seems unusually transparent. It is not necessarily a place where God becomes more present, but where we become more present to God. In such moments, we awaken to a sacred Presence that was there all along. Scripture offers many accounts of these awakenings, but two of the clearest are found in the stories of Jacob and Moses—neither of whom encountered God in a temple, sanctuary, or traditionally religious setting.

Jacob Awakens

Jacob was the grandson of Abraham and the son of Isaac and Rebekah, born into the family through whom God had promised to bless the world. Yet his story was complicated from the beginning. After deceiving his aging father and taking the blessing intended for his older brother, Esau, Jacob was forced to flee for his life. Leaving behind his family, his home, and everything familiar, he set out alone for Haran.

He was not making a spiritual pilgrimage or searching for sacred ground. He was a frightened fugitive carrying the consequences of his own choices into the wilderness.

When night fell, Jacob stopped in an unnamed place and used a stone for a pillow. As he slept, he dreamed of a stairway joining earth and heaven, with angels ascending and descending upon it. When Jacob awoke, he exclaimed:

“Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!”

—Genesis 28:16, NRSVUE

Filled with holy awe, he continued:

“How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”

—Genesis 28:17, NRSVUE

Jacob raised the stone as a sacred pillar and named the place Bethel—“the house of God.” A stone, the night sky, and an unnamed patch of wilderness became his sanctuary. Jacob awakened from a dream, but he also awakened to a deeper reality: the spiritual world was not somewhere else. It surrounded him, even there.

God had not suddenly arrived. Jacob had awakened to the Presence that was there all along.

Jacob’s experience offers one of Scripture’s clearest pictures of a thin space. This encounter did not occur in a temple or tranquil garden, but in loneliness, uncertainty, displacement, and failure. Thin spaces are not necessarily places where God becomes more present. They are places where we become more present to God. Even the wildernesses of our lives may become gates of heaven when we awaken and confess, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it.”

Moses Notices

Moses had a similar experience while tending sheep beyond the wilderness near Mount Horeb—a remote place far from any temple or sanctuary. He saw a bush that was burning yet was not consumed. Rather than passing by, Moses became curious and turned aside to look more closely. His curiosity became the threshold into a thin space.

Curiosity is the threshold into a thin space.

Here’s the the thing about curiosity. Curiosity takes time and intention. There’s no way around it. To become curious, we will need to slow down. We will need to take time and give time, time to transform what might look ordinary into a thin space.

Moses noticed. He named what was happening. Then he nurtured the encounter by remaining present to it. As he drew near, he heard God say:

“Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”

—Exodus 3:5, NRSVUE

The ground had not suddenly become sacred. Moses had awakened to its sacredness. Like Jacob, he discovered that an ordinary place in the natural world could become a meeting place between the visible and invisible. What began with noticing opened into an encounter that changed the direction of his life.

(This is the actual trail Gwen and I hiked this week. I could not help from “noticing” the light; the yellow flowers, the shades of green. I knew the moment I stepped onto this ground—that it was holy.)

Notice. Name. Nurture.

To notice, name and nurture is the invitation to live a life of wonder, curiosity and awe. First, we notice what may or may not be a burning bush—just as Moses did. We turn towards what looks interesting—that calls for our attention. We move past the noticing and we give it names—we see to define it with our words—through our language we share as human beings. Then we appreciate what has happened; what we’ve seen; what has beckoned us to look deeper and we we are nourished by the experience.

Thin Spaces are invitations for us to notice, name and nurture. This is actually the practice with being more contemplative—more reflective. As we move into the spirit of being more contemplative, we realize that there are actually benefits upon benefits for this journey of awe. We slow down. Our heart rate decreases. Stress falls away. Our blood pressure drops. (see the previous post for some of the research I’m compiling on the scientific benefits of experiencing thin spaces. We are nurtured by nature and to be healthy, stable and grounded, we need nature to do her work in us and through us—and we are the better for it. (Again, see my research in the previous Substack).

Allow me to anchor the concept of “thin spaces” with you by offering what ancient voices through the centuries have noted; have observed and have written. Wisdom is found in the voices of the wise. What is also true is that wisdom is found in multiple voices—not just one voice.

Poetry as Thin Space

Thin spaces are not limited to geographical landscapes such as mountains, oceans and sunrises or sunsets. Babies are a thin space. We are invited to look into a babies face and see something beyond flesh and blood. We see innocence. We see purity. We see new beginnings.

Being with someone who is dying—passing from this world into the next—is a thin space. We are sobered by our mortality. We are reminded what is important. We realize we really do see for a thin veil. We are reminded of what is really important in this life.

Poetry works the same way. Through a poem, we are offered metaphor, nuance, a less linear way of looking at life. Reading poetry is a way to practice moving into thin spaces.

Here is my poem, “The Chrysalis” and this poem offers an image of a cocoon—an actual chrysalis that I “noticed” one day. I turned aside, just as Moses did when he noticed the bush that was on fire. I just peered. I stared. And my starting became prayer. This poem might offer a “thin space” for you to enter as. you read it slowly; perhaps read it outloud. Read it once. Then read it again noticing any word or phrase that calls for your attention. Sit silently with the word, phrase or verse. Then “name” what it is that is happening inside your own life-like chrysalis that might speak to you.

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Blessings

Stephen

THICK…

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Why we need “Thin Spaces”

What the Research Is Showing

Richard Louv uses the phrase nature-deficit disorder to describe the human costs of becoming alienated from the natural world. He does not present it as a medical diagnosis, but as a way of naming what happens when outdoor life disappears from our experience. In Indoor Epidemic, Dr. John La Puma approaches the same problem from a physician’s perspective, arguing that prolonged indoor living deprives our bodies of the natural light, movement, air, sensory variety, and biological rhythms for which they were formed.

Science does not attempt to measure the soul directly. It can, however, measure many conditions that affect the soul’s capacity to flourish: stress, sleep, attention, mood, rumination, nervous-system regulation, social connection, and the experience of awe.

The following studies offer important evidence:

Two hours a week in nature is associated with better health and well-being. In a study of nearly 20,000 people, Mathew White and his colleagues found that participants who spent at least 120 minutes a week in nature were more likely to report good health and greater well-being than those who reported no nature contact. The two hours could be experienced all at once or accumulated across several shorter visits.

A walk in nature can quiet rumination. Gregory Bratman and his colleagues found that a ninety-minute walk in a natural environment reduced self-reported rumination—the repetitive rehearsal of troubling thoughts—and decreased activity in a brain region associated with this pattern. Participants who walked through a heavily traveled urban setting did not experience the same change.

Forests help the body move toward rest and restoration. Japanese studies of shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing, found that time in forest environments was associated with lower cortisol, pulse rate, and blood pressure, along with increased parasympathetic activity. The parasympathetic nervous system helps the body move away from vigilance and toward rest, digestion, restoration, and healing.

Natural sounds can help the nervous system recover from stress. In an experimental study, participants listened to nature sounds or human-made noise after completing a stressful task. Recovery of the body’s stress response occurred more readily while listening to natural sounds. Wind moving through trees, birdsong, and flowing water are not merely pleasant background sounds; they may help the body recognize that it is safe enough to settle.

Daylight supports sleep, mood, and the body’s inner clock. Research involving more than 400,000 participants found that greater exposure to outdoor daytime light was associated with easier waking, less tiredness, fewer symptoms of insomnia, and more favorable mood-related outcomes. Sunlight entering the eyes—especially earlier in the day—helps synchronize the circadian system that regulates sleep, alertness, hormones, and mood.

A brief walk in a park can restore attention. In a controlled study of children diagnosed with ADHD, Andrea Faber Taylor and Frances Kuo found that a twenty-minute walk in a park produced better concentration afterward than comparable walks through downtown or residential environments. This work illustrates one of Louv’s central insights: nature gives fatigued attention a different and more restorative way to engage.

Green and blue spaces are associated with greater well-being. An international study involving participants from eighteen countries found that more frequent recreational visits to green spaces, rivers, lakes, and coastal areas were associated with greater positive well-being and lower mental distress. The effects were modest, and the study did not prove causation, but the pattern appeared across several kinds of natural environments.

Even a view of nature can support physical recovery. In Roger Ulrich’s landmark 1984 study, researchers examined the hospital records of 46 patients recovering from gallbladder surgery. Twenty-three patients had rooms overlooking a small stand of trees; the other 23 were matched with comparable patients whose windows faced a brick wall. Those with the view of trees remained in the hospital for an average of 7.96 postoperative days, compared with 8.70 days for those facing the wall—nearly one full day less. They also received fewer negative comments in nurses’ notes and required fewer doses of strong pain medication. Nature does not always have to be entered physically to affect us. Sometimes the sight of trees through a window can become part of the healing environment.

Awe can enlarge our concern beyond ourselves. In a series of five studies, Paul Piff and his colleagues found that experiences of awe were associated with greater generosity, ethical decision-making, and helpfulness. In one experiment, participants who stood beneath a grove of towering trees reported a smaller sense of self-importance and behaved more helpfully toward others. The experience of being small before something vast did not diminish them; it enlarged their capacity for relationship.

Connection with the night sky is associated with happiness and well-being. Christopher Barnes and Holli-Anne Passmore developed the Night Sky Connectedness Index and found that a stronger sense of relationship with the night sky was positively associated with mental well-being, happiness, and connection with nature. This emerging field is promising, but it does not yet demonstrate that moonlight itself produces a specific health benefit. The stronger evidence concerns natural darkness, freedom from excessive artificial light, and the wonder and perspective awakened by the moon and stars.

Taken together, these studies suggest that the natural world affects us through several interconnected pathways. Sunlight regulates us. Forests settle us. Water restores us. Natural sounds calm us. The open sky gives us perspective. Darkness permits rest, while the moon and stars awaken wonder. Nature returns us to our bodies, interrupts our compulsions, restores our attention, and reminds us that we belong to a world larger than ourselves.

These findings do not prove the spiritual meaning of a thin space. Science cannot tell us whether a forest is holy or whether divine presence shimmers upon the sea. It can tell us that when we step outside, become attentive, and encounter the living world, something measurable happens within us. The body settles, the mind clears, and the conditions in which the soul may awaken begin to emerge.

Here’s the research I have studied:

Poetry helps us enter thin spaces

At this intersection of my life, I am using poetry to best articulate what research alone, fails to prove. Poetry helps us enter “thin spaces” because poetry uses metaphor, nuance and language that slows us down to marinate in something as true; as pure and as important as facts alone. Thin spaces, after all are not “certain” landscapes. Poetry helps the landscape of the soul to honored, recognized, validated and celebrated. This is precisely why everyone needs to read poems—especially in these days.

Here’s my new poem titled, “Thick Spaces.” I wrote this poem because I wanted to honestly explore the journey for me of moving from being thick to thin. Read it and see what you hear in it. Can you relate?

All Subscribers to my Substack and read the essay—but only those of you who choose to cheer me onward and forward through upgrading your Subscription can read on—get all my poems and become a part of the community we’re building here! I hope you’ll consider my invitation and join me in the full experience with my poems.

Stephen

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(Gwen took this surreal photo on 8/23/26)

An Introduction

Stephen W. Smith

Across cultures and centuries, people have encountered mountains, forests, deserts, rivers, oceans, and other places in nature as thresholds where the visible and invisible meet, human beings awaken to mystery, and the soul remembers its place within the sacred whole. The Celtic Christian tradition calls such places thin spaces—places where the veil between heaven and earth seems transparent and the presence of God, always near, becomes easier to perceive.

A thin space is the meeting place of sacred earth and sacred soul, where the boundaries between the visible and invisible, the temporal and eternal, become transparent. It is not necessarily a place where God is more present, but a place where we become more awake to the Presence that has been there all along. In a thin space, mystery and truth meet, our smallness opens into the great expanse, and all creation shimmers in glory.

The Great Disconnection

One of the great misunderstandings of our age is that information is wisdom, stimulation is aliveness, and digital connection is communion. We spend our days enclosed within buildings, vehicles, schedules, and screens. We carry nearly limitless information in our pockets, yet we are losing our capacity to notice the tree outside the window, the shifting clouds overhead, or the condition of our own souls. The tragedy is not that the holy has withdrawn from us. The tragedy is that we have become too distracted to recognize the holy hidden in plain sight.

Technology itself is not the enemy. The danger lies in the quiet surrender of our attention. Every alert, vibration, and invitation to scroll pulls us away from the place where we are, the person before us, and the life unfolding around us. We can be everywhere and nowhere at once—connected to thousands of people while remaining disconnected from our bodies, our surroundings, and our interior lives.

Creation as Sacred Gift

In my soul-care work with leaders, I have noticed a striking relationship between the outer and inner landscapes of their lives. Those who live almost entirely inside—inside offices, airplanes, meeting rooms, and cars—often describe souls that feel anxious, depleted, fragmented, or numb. The farther they move from the living world, the farther they sometimes seem to drift from themselves.

The soul is not detached from the body, the senses, the nervous system, or the earth. We cannot adequately understand the state of the soul without asking when we last felt sunlight on our faces, walked beneath trees, listened to moving water, or stood quietly beneath the night sky. Nature is not merely scenery surrounding the spiritual life. It is one of the places where the soul remembers itself.

Research increasingly supports what human beings have intuitively known for centuries. Time in forests can reduce stress and help the body move toward rest. Morning sunlight supports the rhythms governing sleep and wakefulness. Natural sounds can help the nervous system recover after stress. Walking in nature can quiet rumination and restore tired attention. Oceans, rivers, and lakes can encourage calm and well-being. Even a view of trees through a hospital window has been associated with improved recovery.The importance of creation is woven throughout the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. Genesis declares creation “very good” and places humanity within the garden to cultivate and protect it (Genesis 1:31; 2:15). The Psalms portray the heavens as declaring God’s glory, the seas roaring, the fields rejoicing, and the trees singing for joy (Psalm 19:1–2; 96:11–12). The earth is not spiritually empty matter. It speaks, teaches, praises, groans, and reveals.

Jesus repeatedly directed attention toward the natural world: the lilies of the field, the birds of the air, seeds, soil, vines, trees, wind, and water. Paul wrote that God’s invisible nature can be perceived through the things that have been made :

Perhaps the modern church has suffered because we have confined so much of our experience of God to indoor sanctuaries, artificial lighting, PowerPoint slides and religious programs. Scripture continually leads us back outside—to gardens and wilderness, rivers and seas, mountains and fields, sunlight and stars. When we lose our relationship with creation, we lose not only a source of physical and emotional restoration but one of the places where God has chosen to meet us.

What we need is thin spaces. Thin spaces are already here. What is missing is our awareness of them.

Becoming Awake

A thin space need not be a distant island, an ancient monastery, or an untamed wilderness. It may be a mountain trail, a garden, a riverbank, a city park, or a chair positioned beside an open window. Thinness is not always found in geography alone. It also arises from the quality of attention we bring to a place.

Perhaps our recovery begins with something as simple as stepping outside. We put down the phone. We feel the ground beneath our feet. We turn our faces toward the sun, listen to the wind moving through the trees, and lift our eyes toward the horizon. We become still enough to notice what hurried and distracted living has concealed. At the intersection of awareness and awe, the veil grows thin and the ordinary world becomes radiant again.

Why Poetry?

Poetry is particularly suited to helping us enter a thin space because it can say more in fewer words. In our left brain dominated world, we need something else to help us here. We need the right brain which offers us spaciousness, creativity, appreciation and a soulful understanding of life.

Research explains and measures; poetry evokes. Research may describe what happens to the body when we walk beneath trees or stand beside the sea. Poetry helps us feel why those experiences matter to the soul.

Poetry speaks through image, nuance, symbolism, silence, and metaphor. A river can be both water and grief. A mountain can be geography and endurance. A horizon can mark the edge of sight while opening the heart toward eternity. Poetry does not reduce mystery to certainty. It slows us down, awakens imagination, and teaches us to notice.

A poem is itself a thin space—the meeting place of language and silence, the visible and invisible, the world around us and the world within us. Poetry does not give us the final word. It gives us the attentive heart with which to hear the living world speak.

(Copyright 2026. All Rights Reserved).

Stephen

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As I have aged and grown, so has my understanding of friendship.

I’ve explored my evolving sense of friendship in five of the major books I have written:

The Transformation of a Man’s Heart (Chapter 7 where I use David Benner’s wonderful definition of friendship as “reciprocal”—two way dialogue, not monologue.

The Lazarus Life (Chapter 8 where I explore how no one can do life alone; much less the messy work of transformation. We need each other to really change.)

The Jesus Life (Chapter 7 where I unpack the word “companionship” as two beggars looking for bread and more).

Soul Custody (Chapter 10 where I describe a spiritual friendship and how to nourish one.)

Inside Job (Chapter 10 where I say it is impossible to live and lead a resilient life without being grounded in true community.)

(Several of these are on sale right now—the lowest prices I’ve seen and I’d encourage to get them.)

So, you can see that the theme of “friendship” has been at the core of my own journey for many decades; learning how to build a true friendship; practicing how to show up in friendship: embracing the core values of companionship and more.

Besides me writing, this body of work on relationships throughout my life, I have my own litany of friendships—some gone wrong and many gone right to draw upon over my life.

True friendship is a sacred gift. The Celtics call it “Anam Cara”—a spiritual friendship where one shares the soul of another.

The hardest part of my transition in moving and starting over has been this—how to find true friends.

At this season of my life, I wanted to synthesize my understanding of friendship into a poem. But not an easy poem. It’s been a hard poem to write that has had many revisions and edits. But what you’ll read in this entry is honest, raw and vulnerable.

This poem I want to share with you is about the disappointment and disillusionment I have experienced in friendship when friendship is not two-way; it is not reciprocal; it is not a shared life.

Sadly, many “friendships” are more me listening than building and fostering a life-giving relationship. What happens is a monologue—they do all the talking and I do all the listening.

Can you relate?

Surely this is not just me that realizes that many of my relationships are lopsided.

I felt it was time to call it what it is and I try to do this in my poem that I’m posting for you here.

Blessings,

Stephen

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I’ve written this poem out of the treasure in my heart to put in a poem what I’ve spent my life trying to understand: Belovedness.

If you’re new to me, that might be a new word for you. But if you’ve traveled with us, then you know that belovedness is the hingepin to my life’s work—the greatest theme of our work together in marriage and through Potter’s Inn.

I hope this poem will offer insight, rest from striving and the conviction to be ourselves!

Simply put, belovedness will mess with you. You’ll never get over it. It will penetrate the deepest levels of your soul. At least, this has been my journey.

I hope you’ll enjoy.

I’d be particularly interested in how the poem stirs you…. a line you didn’t expect…a phrase that arrested your heart as you read—-a stanza you want to remember.

And of course, you can leave Gwen a comment as well. She painted the lovely image here.

Blessings

Stephen

Watercolor by Gwen H. Smith

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Old timers believed that foggy August days in the mountains means snowy winter days ahead. It’s in the Farmer’s Almanac. If that is the case, we are going to have a lot of snow.

Gwen painted the view from our sky room where we sit every morning. It’s one of my favorite paintings Gwen has done. This particular scene she painted though shows the valley floor as the fog is lifting. The sun, high above is burning the clouds away.

This morning, though, the fog is thick and I cannot even see the valley or the mountains. And this scene captured my attention to paint a poem for Gwen’s watercolor.

Like the painting, the poem has many layers. One will need time with the poem as one needs time to “see” the painting. Time will offer more meaning.

And so it is with prayer—especially when one prayers in a foggy, obscure season in life.

I hope you’ll find meaning in the poem and painting.

Blessings in obscurity!

Stephen

The Prayer of Obscurity

by  Stephen W. Smith

It’s nice to be in the mountains,
Until you cannot see them.
The fog is thick today.
Impenetrable obscurity.

The rising sun burns the clouds away.
Until then, there is nothing to do but wait.
Waiting is prayer.
Hoping for the muddle to lift.

These bewildering rolling hills extend an invitation.
The peace of not knowing—not seeing.
Not even being able to do something or fix someone,
But wait, trusting the sun to do its thing again.

I submit to the clouds.
I yield to unknowing.
I make room for what I cannot see.
I welcome this obscurity now.

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Hitting a wall is normal.

Being at the end of the rope is common.

Feeling like the sky is falling is like every day now.

But, what do we do when you feel like you just can’t go on?

That’s the question, isn’t it?

First, to admit that there really is a wall is the beginning, I think.

To confess that there the rope is stretched beyond repair;

To sign your name to the document that says the sky really might be falling,

Takes courage.

Courage is the soil where thresholds take root. A threshold is a space of possibility that somehow, just appears. Thresholds are not manufactured; manipulated or programed.

Thresholds are sacred openings, a portal, if that makes more sense that invites you in; beckons you through and calls you forward.

I believe this generation is the resting on the hinge pin of something new—unexpected unfolding.

God knows we need the hingepin to move us forward through this mess.

Here’s my new poem exploring this question.

I don’t provide any answers but I may shed come light.

And even a small light could be enough to show you the way through.

I hope so.

Stephen

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Gwen and I found a section of the river that we had not yet explored. It became a respite for me. Everything we needed was there as if the river was waiting on us.

Water is often a threshold—a new beginning—a place that seems to take you somewhere far, far away.

As I wrote this poem I thought of the lyrics to the old hymn many of us have sung: “Shall we gather at the river…”

What a beautiful invitation!

In recent weeks, I’ve felt the swirls of too much whitewater—too fast—too much—too loud. So, writing this particular poem is the way I anchored the image we saw and experienced. Imagining some of the lines in this poem from how I remember that section of the river…yet feeling the longing rise up within me for the peace of a river—the shining threshold of encounter. For me, the shining threshold was to find some moments of tranquility and peace and to share this moment together.

Hope you will enjoy and meet me at the river one day soon!

Stephen

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I set a goal: downsize my books. I have too many.

I will keep 100 books. That is all.

I will scour the shelves; put most in boxes and haul them to places for their new homes.

There are many reasons for doing this: simplicity; decluttering my study; make wall space for art I love and more.

But there are deeper reasons— reasons that I have arrived at now after wanting a more spacious life.

This will not be easy. It’s a daunting challenge.

To keep 100 books seems impossible.

So, I turned to poetry to help me in my decision. I work through my love of my books; how I’ve grown and transformed because of reading them and calling them friend and companion. And I resolved my dilemma by sharing the new, living book I’m enjoying now in this season of my life.

See what you think!

See if you can relate.

See if you think this goal strange.

See if you might be inspired to join me in this challenge.

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In my book of poems, Greening, there are three poems that are looking rag-tagged; well-worn and my copy of the book folds open to page 21, page 22 and page 23. There, I have written these three poems:

Let (page 21)

A Prayer in Letting Go (page 22)

I Commend You (page 23).

Today, I’m publishing my latest poem giving voice to these similar themes in the spiritual life: Stay human and give up my attempts to be like God. I’m doing so, because I need to.

How quickly life turns: one phone call; onne email; one little text can send us spiraling.

This is what it means to be human isn’t it? To embrace our humanity and let go of any illusions of control that might be lurking in our mind and heart.

For some of us, there may not be enough paper to write our lamentations on when it comes to our children; our jobs; our relationships; our health—our very lives. So, we have the psalms in the Scriptures we can turn to and in addition, I need to turn to some weathered poems that help me remain human; practice letting go and commending—turning someone over to God when I can shoulder the load any more.

It’s more than a little interesting to note that one half of the 150 Psalms in the Scriptures—75 of them—are poems of lament. Something happened to the psalmist where they, too needed to faceplant and cry out in the dark night to find even a dimly lit candle.

May this bring a sliver of peace to those of you who need it today.

Stephen

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If you have not gotten a copy of Greening and are unfamiliar with the three poems I mention in this post, then please do. I hear from so many that the poem, “Let” seems to articulate a truth so many of us need.

To have access to my poems, you’ll need to consider becoming an upgraded subscriber. In doing so, you’ll have access to my work; all my podcasts and be able to leave comments. I read them all and interact with most.

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How are you surviving these long days of summer? How are you surviving given all you’ve been through? How are you surviving, maybe sensing that the trouble you’re in— we’re in right now— is not yet done?

How does a human move from survival mode to a sense of thriving?

These are legitimate questions, I think. I’ve spent a life time searching for some of the answers.

How does a person transform their mind from living in a sense of scarcity to a sense of spaciousness? For me, and if you’ve been reading my Substack lately, you know this question has captivated me in recent months.

To survive, is not the only goal. The psychiatrist., Victor Frankl taught us this, given his survival in the despair of Auschwitz. Survival is really an invitation to search for meaning.

I saw the epic move, “The Odyssey this week. It stirred me up—moved me in deep ways and I think I will need to go see it again to glean what is mine to keep. It is a story of survival and the quest to attempt to thrive. It is about the great themes of the journey in life.

Here’s my poem where I pose a few scenarios to invite you to reflect more deeply about your own life—your own story of survival—no matter how good or hard it has been.

You’ll need to upgrade your subscription to read my poem and to have access to the corpus my poems. I hope you’ll consider doing this and in doing so, you’ll also be able to comment and interact with me here.

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Our bodies are the address of our souls. Our bodies hold us through all the years; all the fears; all the tears and all the joys of life.

For some of us, it’s a slow wake up call to pay attention to our envelopes and then to give kindness; love and respect to that which holds us through our lives.

Sadly, the Christian church hasn’t done a good job on helping us embrace, celebrate and care for the human body. In fact, there are sad chapters in church history where the body was suspect—even regarded as evil.

We all need some more work on how we hold; how we regard; how we treat our envelope; our address for our souls; our human bodies.

See what this poems stirs in you as you read it.

Blessings,

Stephen W. Smith

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When I came alive to poetry, I felt the tugging pull of an illusion which said, “Everyone should read poems—if only they would.” The reactions I’ve gotten when sharing my first book of poems, Greening, has been sobering.

I have found the most resistant people ground to reading poetry are a certain people of faith—the people who live by the “word” and follow what they have surmised as the straight and narrow of black and white thinking and living.

It is odd that so, so much of the pages of Christian Scripture are poems themselves: the creation stories; the entire book of Psalms; Song of Solomon; Lamentations of Jeremiah; the rich metaphors embedded the stories and accounts of the writers, the entire book of Revelation and the prayers of Paul.

Just last week, I sat with a couple who traveled thousands of miles for their own soul care. One of the days, we took our chairs to the river near my mountain home. We sat together placing our chairs on smooth stones in the flowing water. Every day, we began with a poem—an “intestinal” expression of our souls revealing depth; expressions of revelation and moments of wonder in reading aloud a few stanzas of jugular heart beats of the poets. The more we read; the more we read the poems reflectively, the more light was shed. I call it “progressive revelation.” More light comes as we simply take steps forward toward the light. Poetry just helps. That’s the bottom line I think.

We are living in a day and age where we really need expression from the right hemisphere of our minds along with the linear logic of the left brain. Our world today is dominated by left brain thinking and to be whole, we need both hemisphere synching and informing us. We need both spheres of our minds to “get” and to “receive” the sheer comfort and honesty that some poems offer.

News is sometimes too dramatic; too speculative; and too much.

But poetry is an invitation to “see” something binary thinking bypasses.

Here’s a poem I worked on over the weekend. I wrote the first draft thinking I was close to the end in finishing it. But as I sat with it more, the poem invited me to dig out more than I originally thought, saw or felt.

This is the fascinating power of the many layers of a poem. Layer by layer, stanza by stanza we see more that meets the eye. And in that holy encounter we receive bread for the journey—food for the soul.

Here’s my recommendation: Get yourself a book of poems by Mary Oliver like Devotions and read one poem a day to dive into the stream of refreshment and life. Or get a copy of my book of poems, Greening: Poems in the Unfolding of our Lives and read one a week and then ask someone to do the same with you. See what comes out of such an experiment.

My intention with this poem is to explore “spaciousness” in a poetic way—rather than teaching someone what spaciousness is….show them in a poem.

Enjoy!

Stephen

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I am delighted to share that my poem, “A Larger Container” has been selected by the North Carolina Bards Association and will be published in their upcoming Anthology in the fall of 2026. I’ve been invited to offer a public reading of this particular poem in several events in the fall. I’ll keep you posted.

There’s no one event, thing or development that inspired a. poem such as this. Rather, this poem came to be as the result of a lot of hard work; sorting out accumulated stuff that got piled up in my heart over the years.

Has there ever been a time or season when you felt a bit—root bound?

A time when you just needed more space to believe, to do what you always wanted to do but haven’t yet?

Let this poem take you where you need to go. See what happens as you read it.

To have such a poem as this selected by a prestigious journal for publication made me realize that I am not the only one that is looking for a larger container to hold their life these days.

Before you read the poem however, I wanted to share a “5 STAR review that Greening received. Greening: Poems in the Unfolding of our Lives is my first book of poetry published last winter.

Here’s the link to order a copy of Greening through Amazon but you can also get it wherever you order you books! I hope you will do just that.

Here’s the poem to enjoy!

Stephen

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A dear friend offered me a single word that felt like being given a gift of a key to a box that needed opening in me. Spaciousness is the key that unlocked something in me—a keyword that brought epiphany, peace and assurance.

I have been reflecting on this beautiful word now for a couple of weeks— mining out the gold; exploring what perennial wisdom is embedded in such a word as this; then owning this word in my mind, body and soul.

To help me explore the term more deeply, I wrote a poem with alliteration to anchor the word deep with me so that I would not forget it and could recall the word as a gift.

Now, we are sitting at the coast at Hunting Island State Park in South Carolina. It’s deserted, hauntingly beautiful and spacious in every dimension possible.

Working Definition of the Spacious Life

A spacious life is one in which there is enough interior and exterior room to receive life rather than merely react to it. It is marked by an unhurried heart, freedom from compulsive striving, attentiveness to God, creation, and others, and a growing capacity for love, wonder, grief, joy, and faithful presence.

The opposite of spaciousness is not simply busyness but constriction—a life narrowed by fear, hurry, ego, performance, and scarcity.

So here , you have it. I’m thinking now that there’s more here than meets the eye or could ever be said on a poem. We shall see!

Does “spaciousness” stir you in some way?

Stephen

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In our yard in Western North Carolina, the glory of the Limelight Hydrangeas is now in bloom.

These magnificent blossoms transform from green into light and became like torches of light in shape giving off their brilliance and white dazzling array.

Gwen and I sit on our front porch each morning now watching their transfiguration. And this morning, as the sun hit these torches, I walked out into our yard and just stared.

I noticed.

I nurtured.

I named what it was that these amazing torches ignited in me.

The poem that I want to share with you is the result of this experience.

The contemplative journey is marked by growing in our awareness. The outer world becomes a portal into the inner one.

You don’t move quickly on the terrain where something invites you to pay attention.

At least I don’t want to let “fast” be the pace of my life anymore.

I would miss the torches.

I would miss the light offered me.

I would miss the good news being brought to me in this amazing creation.

Blessings on the journey!

Stephen

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