Transphysical Meeting Places: Where the visible and invisible intersect

Sometimes a meeting place is a kitchen table.

Sometimes it’s a cemetery, a photograph, a familiar chair, or a conversation with someone who isn’t physically present.

Sometimes it’s a communion table, where I taste the bread and wine, feel them in my hands and mouth, and experience a connection that seems to reach beyond the physical elements themselves.

I’ve come to think of these experiences as transphysical meeting places.

They are moments and settings in which physical experience and nonphysical connection intersect.

For years, in sermons and worship services, I’ve spoken about ordinary acts of kindness as having something of a sacramental quality. A handshake, a smile, a kind word, or a thoughtful deed can become an outward, visible expression of something inward and invisible.

But the word sacramental carries religious associations that may not communicate equally well to everyone.

The experience itself is much broader.

We encounter it in friendships, families, memories, art, music, spirituality, and even relationships mediated by technology.

The meeting place does not create the relationship. Rather, the relationship gives the meeting place its meaning.

The experience does not come from the picture. The picture comes from the experience.

And perhaps that is why some of the most meaningful places in our lives cannot be located on a map.

(“Transphysical Meeting Places,” image co-created by Bill & Sol with ChatGPT, 2026).