What the White Lotus says about life

and why I am in search of thin spaces

Photo by he zhu on Unsplash

The writer-director of the White Lotus placed spirituality at the center of his brilliant new season. This is refreshing, because spirituality doesn’t get much attention in the mainstream. He used a Tibetan monastery to elevate the theme, but the overarching story also depicted Jesus’ ideas about the upside-down nature of the reign of the Spirit (i.e. the kingdom), where “the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

The great mystery that Jesus understood was that the reign of the Spirit was overlaid on top of our world, in this present moment. We don’t have to wait until we die to live there. Except that, we do have to die, in a sense. The White Lotus portrays this profound mystery (spoiler alert). Timothy Ratliff experienced a kind of death, and it allowed him to finally experience life. The resurrection of his son, Lochlan, was a symbol of his own resurrection, into a life that embraced living at the bottom of society, in connection with others.

Each of the characters, and each of us, are presented with a dilemma in life. We can cling to our very natural desire for status and answers, or we can let go, and accept failure and the tension of unresolved questions. If we choose well, we experience the reign of the Spirit, now. In other words, we experience loving community. We are faced with this choice on a daily basis. The reign of the Spirit is not a permanent state, we have to “seek it first,” moment by moment. But it is never far away. And that is why I am constantly in search of thin spaces.

In search of thin spaces

When I held my brother’s hand while he was in a coma last November, it was easy to sense the reign of the Spirit overlaying our world. Hospital rooms are thin spaces. I recognized this years ago, when I was involved with a prayer ministry that led me to visit people in the hospital on occasion. I described this phenomenon at a little Mennonite church about six years ago. I’ve only received a handful of invitations to speak from a pulpit in my life, and on this particular morning, I told a few stories about the way the Spirit shows up in hospitals. In Her beautiful, upside-down way, the Spirit was preparing a thin space. As I was telling those stories, my brother was being transported to the hospital after breaking his pelvis. He’d been sleeping under a bridge and rolled off the ledge to rocky ground ten feet below. I was in a hospital room with him a few hours after preaching about the blessings of these visits. I invited my neighbor, another guy who lives at the bottom of society, because I sensed that his prayers would break through the thin veil in that room. Our prayers were answered as my brother’s alcoholism and pelvis both began the slow process of healing.

I dreaded hospital rooms for most of my life. I’d like to say that I now fully embrace them, but I still face the same dilemma that all the characters from the White Lotus faced. I want life to be easy and beautiful. I want to be surrounded by youth and health. I want to be rich and take fabulous vacations. I want my dreams to come true. But I have met the Spirit, and she introduced herself to me as Holy Death. I want to live in Her reign, so I seek our thin spaces, where I am more likely to hear Her.

To be fair, the Spirit doesn’t only ever ask us to dwell in the most sorrowful places with those at the very bottom of society. Some people have heeded this invitation, experienced profound blessing as a result, and we call them saints. But we also live among saints that appear to be ordinary people. On a moment-by-moment basis, they let go of whatever version of “living the dream” they tend to cling to, and choose instead to give something up in favor of someone else. And blessings flow to them in the form of loving connection.

Thin spaces make the choice so incredibly obvious, it really isn’t a choice at all. I find these spaces in solitude and in gatherings. I lean against a tree, whose non-human wisdom spreads through my nervous system, and it becomes crystal clear. I pray with others who have tasted this reign of the Spirit too, and we remind each other that it is obvious. When we find spaces like this regularly, it becomes easier and easier to let go, and we tend to live in the reign of the Spirit more and more.