Many of us have found a lot of joy in the Celtic tradition of 'Thin Places.' A Thin Place is some 'where' where a person feels like he or she is standing in a place where heaven and earth almost touch.
I remember my semester abroad in college standing in Durham Cathedral in England--impressed by its beauty and massiveness, by the years and years it took to build. But I didn't sense any special sacredness. And I regretted that. It had been a long time since I had been moved by (or into) the sacred.
At the time of this musing I was standing at the altar rail. I happened to look down. The place for kneeling on my side of the rail was plain stone--instead of stone covered by lovely hand-stitched cushions.
Then, out of the blue, I was overwhelmed with a strange and powerful sensation. Looking down I'd just noticed that all across this 30 or 40 feet of hand-hewn stone there were knee prints--cupped depressions made by eight centuries of human knees sinking, resting, waiting before the altar.
It's hard to articulate--or even know--exactly why I was affected, why so moved simply by noticing knee-prints. It must have had something to do with sensing a kinship with that long procession of people I'd never met--and never would. And I guess that just by wishing I could feel the specialness of the cathedral I had become a pilgrim too. I was getting some sort of pervasive intuition that Life, a Meaningful Life, is always like a pilgrimage.
I sank down and let my knees rest exactly where those other knees had rested. And in that moment, I was down the rabbit hole--or out the back of the wardrobe: Sacredness became stunningly palpable--in the cathedral and in me. I was in a thin place.
Earlier this year, Eric Weiner, travel writer for the New York Times was even writing ths about Thin Places:
"I’m drawn to places that beguile and inspire, sedate and stir, places where, for a few blissful moments I loosen my death grip on life, and can breathe again. It turns out these destinations have a name: thin places."
Unfortunately, getting to a thin place can be very expensive. I just went on Kayak and the cheapest roundtrip flight from Atlanta to London is $948--that's if you fly out and return on a Thursday. Travel near a holiday and it's a lot more.
Happily, we really don't have to go anywhere to get to thin places; we move through thin places every day. We're just moving so fast and have developed such thick human hides that we rarely sense the thin places we pass.
Instead of buying roundtrip tickets to London, Dublin, or Kiev, we could simply invest in Permeability. We can learn how to open, become permeable to sacred moments and places we move through every day. Instead of passing by them, we can through them, we can invite them to move through us as well. When we're open like this, we're being spiritually permeable.
The word Permeable comes from two Latin words that simply mean to pass through.
Pretend for a minute to be Mary Oliver: what do you do when you see a robin's egg?
Imagine your favorite grandparent: what does or did he or she do upon seeing you?
Do that.
When you notice something that flickers with even a hint of something that attracts your soul, slow down--it doesn't have to be more than 30 seconds. Notice that flickering and the tiny beginning of a smile on you and in you.
Give in to it, go with it. It wants to get bigger. Let it.
Welcome it. Focus on it. Celebrate it.
Thank yourself for slowing down. Thank God for being alive.
Let your neural pathways know this is important! Without taking a little time to focus, to welcome, to celebrate, our brain patterns won't change. Cathedrals took time to build. So do we.
Becoming permeable, allowing ourselves to slow down and let life pass into us and out through us, we become thin places. Others become thin places. Life Itself becomes 'thin' in evermore delightful and meaningful ways.
I remember my semester abroad in college standing in Durham Cathedral in England--impressed by its beauty and massiveness, by the years and years it took to build. But I didn't sense any special sacredness. And I regretted that. It had been a long time since I had been moved by (or into) the sacred.
At the time of this musing I was standing at the altar rail. I happened to look down. The place for kneeling on my side of the rail was plain stone--instead of stone covered by lovely hand-stitched cushions.
Then, out of the blue, I was overwhelmed with a strange and powerful sensation. Looking down I'd just noticed that all across this 30 or 40 feet of hand-hewn stone there were knee prints--cupped depressions made by eight centuries of human knees sinking, resting, waiting before the altar.
It's hard to articulate--or even know--exactly why I was affected, why so moved simply by noticing knee-prints. It must have had something to do with sensing a kinship with that long procession of people I'd never met--and never would. And I guess that just by wishing I could feel the specialness of the cathedral I had become a pilgrim too. I was getting some sort of pervasive intuition that Life, a Meaningful Life, is always like a pilgrimage.
I sank down and let my knees rest exactly where those other knees had rested. And in that moment, I was down the rabbit hole--or out the back of the wardrobe: Sacredness became stunningly palpable--in the cathedral and in me. I was in a thin place.
Earlier this year, Eric Weiner, travel writer for the New York Times was even writing ths about Thin Places:
"I’m drawn to places that beguile and inspire, sedate and stir, places where, for a few blissful moments I loosen my death grip on life, and can breathe again. It turns out these destinations have a name: thin places."
Unfortunately, getting to a thin place can be very expensive. I just went on Kayak and the cheapest roundtrip flight from Atlanta to London is $948--that's if you fly out and return on a Thursday. Travel near a holiday and it's a lot more.
Happily, we really don't have to go anywhere to get to thin places; we move through thin places every day. We're just moving so fast and have developed such thick human hides that we rarely sense the thin places we pass.
Instead of buying roundtrip tickets to London, Dublin, or Kiev, we could simply invest in Permeability. We can learn how to open, become permeable to sacred moments and places we move through every day. Instead of passing by them, we can through them, we can invite them to move through us as well. When we're open like this, we're being spiritually permeable.
The word Permeable comes from two Latin words that simply mean to pass through.
Pretend for a minute to be Mary Oliver: what do you do when you see a robin's egg?
Imagine your favorite grandparent: what does or did he or she do upon seeing you?
Do that.
When you notice something that flickers with even a hint of something that attracts your soul, slow down--it doesn't have to be more than 30 seconds. Notice that flickering and the tiny beginning of a smile on you and in you.
Give in to it, go with it. It wants to get bigger. Let it.
Welcome it. Focus on it. Celebrate it.
Thank yourself for slowing down. Thank God for being alive.
Let your neural pathways know this is important! Without taking a little time to focus, to welcome, to celebrate, our brain patterns won't change. Cathedrals took time to build. So do we.
Becoming permeable, allowing ourselves to slow down and let life pass into us and out through us, we become thin places. Others become thin places. Life Itself becomes 'thin' in evermore delightful and meaningful ways.
