Thin Slices and Thin Places
Meandering on......I've recently been browsing through two very different books: one mentions "thin slices" and the other "thin places" and I find both ideas intriguing.
In Malcolm Gladwell's blink "thin slices" refers to small segments of experience that can tell us a great deal if only we can learn to trust them. Instead of shying away from making snap judgements, Gladwell says we should rely more on our first impressions and just what we know to be correct even if we can't explain it. For example we can learn a lot about people, their relationships with others, their trustworthiness, their organizational skills and so on in just a few minutes, in a "thin slice," with as much accuracy - if not more so - than in long drawn out studies and psychological tests. Knowledge that comes to us in a manner we can't explain may be nonetheless as valid as the more "scientific" or "reasoned" explanation.
Marcus J. Borg in The Heart of Christianity writes that in Celtic spirituality everything in the universe is "in God" and God is in everything in the visible world. We are just not aware of this except for moments when we do "see it" or do experience God shining through everything. These are "thin places" - when the visible world and the sacred meet for us as individuals. He goes on to explain that "thin places" are many and varied: a thin place can be a geographical locale such as a shrine but it can also be a wilderness setting; it can be music or art or poetry or it might be a church service; a thin place could be a person or it could be an event.
I really like both ideas - thin slices and thin places. There's a little bit of the mysterious here and maybe that's as it should be.
In Malcolm Gladwell's blink "thin slices" refers to small segments of experience that can tell us a great deal if only we can learn to trust them. Instead of shying away from making snap judgements, Gladwell says we should rely more on our first impressions and just what we know to be correct even if we can't explain it. For example we can learn a lot about people, their relationships with others, their trustworthiness, their organizational skills and so on in just a few minutes, in a "thin slice," with as much accuracy - if not more so - than in long drawn out studies and psychological tests. Knowledge that comes to us in a manner we can't explain may be nonetheless as valid as the more "scientific" or "reasoned" explanation.
Marcus J. Borg in The Heart of Christianity writes that in Celtic spirituality everything in the universe is "in God" and God is in everything in the visible world. We are just not aware of this except for moments when we do "see it" or do experience God shining through everything. These are "thin places" - when the visible world and the sacred meet for us as individuals. He goes on to explain that "thin places" are many and varied: a thin place can be a geographical locale such as a shrine but it can also be a wilderness setting; it can be music or art or poetry or it might be a church service; a thin place could be a person or it could be an event.
I really like both ideas - thin slices and thin places. There's a little bit of the mysterious here and maybe that's as it should be.
posted by mamie @ 9:52 PM
3 Comments:
At 12:20 AM,
Anonymous said…
I can connect with thin slices more than I can with thin places. I feel that I have sometimes experienced exactly that with a first impression, but wondered if it was accurate. I want to give the benefit of the doubt.
At 12:01 AM,
canary said…
It is interesting to do one or more of the IAT Implicit Association Tests from Harvard after reading Blink. So often we don't know what our unconscious knows. Think we aren't biased?
At 11:27 AM,
Anonymous said…
Those moments are very rare for me; I can only define them as moments of awe, that take me out of myself. A couple of such moments----about two months ago, I was coming home one evening by myself, turned down our street and there before me was a full moon; I said aloud "Oh my God!" The moment was fleeting but profound. Another such experience happened about thre springs ago. One morning I was waiting in thee car to drive Jack to work and looked at the newly and fully green lawn, and all of a sudden was struck profoundly with the dazzling greenness of it. Again, it was A RARE, FLEETING MOMENT, but imprinted in my mind forever...burned in!!
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