Dear Friends,
This coming St. Patrick’s Day makes me think of my former chaplaincy supervisor and friend Maureen. Maureen, her husband and their daughter took a family trip to Ireland a few years ago. When she returned, she commented that there were many “thin places” there – places where the distance between heaven and earth collapses. The New York Times journalist Eric Steiner described it as locales where “we’re able to catch glimpses of the divine, the transcendent or, as I like to think of it, the Infinite Whatever.”[1]
Steiner says that that ancient Celts, and later, Christians, used the term to describe mesmerizing places like the Isle of Iona (which is now Scotland) or the mountains of the pilgrimage site Croagh Patrick in Ireland. Writes Steiner “Heaven and earth, the Celtic saying goes, are only three feet apart, but in thin places, that distance is even shorter.”
Maureen described a craggy point with mist rising over the ocean, a quiet and small country church that was hundreds of years old, and other places she visited in Ireland where the presence of the divine seemed particularly strong to her.
Regardless of our theology, it is likely that we experience thin places of our own. For me, it was a walk last Sunday afternoon with Gail along a new nature trail less than a mile from our home. As we were leaving, I walked down an alternate path and ended up in a clearing along a sandy-banked creek. The sun was slanted in the sky, the water was clear and the current was swirling, and I could hear a woodpecker tap-tap-tapping away on a nearby tree. I was mesmerized, rooted to this sacred spot, and I didn’t want to leave.
While I don’t believe in a literal heaven, I do believe that there are places – thin places, perhaps – that evoke a tremendous sense of peace and a feeling of change inside. And, I had just discovered one.
Irish Teacher and Poet John O’Donohue wrote, “May you allow the wild beauty of the invisible world to gather you, mind you, and embrace you in belonging.”
Translated for me: take time to find those thin places. The distance to discovery is shorter than we think.
Yours,
Terry