Thin
Places
“It
is that Celtic sense of place that is so appealing—of holy trees, holy wells,
holy mountains—“thin places,” as the Irish call them—places where the veil
between this world and the next is so sheer that it is easy to step through.”
Barbara
Brown Taylor (“Thin Places” Home By Another Way, p.58-59)
Barbara
Brown Taylor in her book of sermons, Home By Another Way, describes the
trip to Ireland she and her husband took to walk the path of St. Patrick on his
feast day. She tells of many thin places they found just trudging along paths
in Ireland—springs gurgling up from the ground in sheep pastures with a circle
of standing stones around it. Such geographic holy hotspots are mapped out for
pilgrims and exist almost everywhere. They are the sites of ancient churches
and shrines, one built on top of another. Also, by centuries of rudimentary
human constructions like stone piles or obelisks to mark them. Often, they are locations
where the energy lines of the earth cross each other, and for eons humans have
been drawn to them.
Thin
places also are marked by time—early morning, when we are between sleep and
waking; when the sun is just breaking the horizon at dawn, and evenings when
the sun is setting but dark has not yet fallen. We experience that sense of
timelessness and merging on shorelines, where the ocean meets the land, and by
mountain rivers where the water is so clear that eternity seems visible in its
depths. Sometimes, unexpectedly, thin places come to us in the midst of a
conversation—we are suddenly transported to another time and place, a different
set of circumstances, in the blink of an eye, as though we had walked through a
door into another reality. And then we’re back, and no time has passed, but we
have in some way been altered by the experience.
One
quality that all thin places have in common is that they energize us. It’s a
little like getting a super surge of energy that restores our equilibrium. I
experience it sometimes when I randomly pick up a book, open it to any page,
and find a message to me, or an answer to a question I’ve been wrestling with. It
is as though someone unseen has been following my struggle and guides my hand
to the book and the page, and my eyes to the message. Someone reaches through
the veil between the worlds and touches me. Perhaps you’ve had this experience
too.
In
these times of turbulence, we need all the help we can get. For many people
there is a sense that we are not alone, that all the worlds are lining up
behind us to help us survive. When you walk in the world, look for the thin
places. Ask for guidance. Ask for help and pray for us and for every living
thing—that we will make it through this time of pandemic, climate catastrophe,
and social upheaval. There is more to this world than we can access with our
five senses, and it wants to help us. As Marianne Williamson said—the whole
universe will line up behind us if we ask, and boy, do we need that.
In the Spirit,
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment