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God Positioning System locates thin places << Previous Next >>
Guest author: Liz Budd Ellmann, MDiv
Are you awake? What might you learn in this “thin time” and “thin place”? What would it be like to be still enough to allow a blackbird to nest in your praying hand? These are spiritual questions that early November asks us as we experience All Saints’, All Souls’, and El Dia de los Muertos.
Having just returned from Ireland, which has a reputation for being a “thin place,” my analytical mind is filled with heady questions: what is a thin place? When is time thin? Who cares about ancestors anyway? Yet my poetic mind simply smiles, knowing the answers hang out between the words, in a contemplative silence that I will process in spiritual direction. A thin place is where two worlds meet, where heaven kisses earth and eternal time brushes against ordinary time.
In a thin place, more than outward geography is experienced. In a thin place, the soul’s GPS intuits hotspots for transformation. In a thin place, we remember that we are hard-wired with a God-Positioning-System, which is restless until connecting with sacred sites, stories, sounds, and symbols. For sure thin places can be experienced anywhere at any time. Our spiritual traditions invite us to pay special attention in ancient, hallowed places – like Ireland -- and during sacred seasons -- like now -- in early November. By focusing awareness now, we practice being spiritually awake always. By meeting regularly with a spiritual director, we learn how to navigate using our soul’s GPS.
In Ireland, I experienced Glendalough as a thin place. For more than a thousand years, pilgrims have visited Glendalough where Saint Kevin played, prayed, and discovered his purpose. One day, the legend tells us, while Kevin the monk was praying with outstretched arms, a blackbird landed in his hand and built her nest. Imagine holding a prayer stance -- in Zen stillness -- long enough for a blackbird to build a nest and raise her young. The Irish poet Seamus Heaney beautifully teaches us about the spiritual companionship between the blackbird and Saint Kevin,
And then there was St Kevin and the blackbird,
The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside
His cell, but the cell is narrow, so
One turned-up palm is out the window, stiff
As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands
And lays in it and settles down to nest.
Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the
tucked
Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked
Into the network of eternal life,
Is moved to pity; now he must hold his hand
Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks
Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown.
And since the whole thing's imagined anyhow,
Imagine being Kevin. Which is he?
Self-forgetful or in agony all the time
From the neck on out down through his
hurting forearms?
Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees?
Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth
Crept up through him? Is there distance in his head?
Alone and mirrored clear in love's deep river,
"To labour and not to seek reward," he prays,
A prayer his body makes entirely
For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird,
And on the riverbank forgotten the river's name.
Saint Kevin’s whole body became a prayer of love that recognized God in an ordinary blackbird. Now imagine me, standing across the lake from Saint Kevin’s cave. Gazing into the lake, I contemplated the blackbird resting in Kevin’s hand and the call for contemplative action in today’s world to become responsible stewards of all God’s creation. Suddenly, my soul felt seen by Saint Kevin, staring out from his cave. In that instance, a robin started singing from a branch just over my head. In that thin place, I felt Saint Kevin’s love encouraging the kind of singing presence that sees God in all things.
Share your stories of thin places, thin times in the comments section by leaving a reply. What do you think of Ron Clark's image of Saint Kevin and the blackbird? What stirs in your soul as you listen to Seamus Heaney read his poem?
11/02,2009, at 13:11
Our symbol of "veil" here in Co. Sligo, Liz, is the arrival of the whooper swans from Greenland and Iceland, which they should do through this Full Moon and here they will be until a Full Moon past Brigid's Day in February, after many lambs and calves will have been born. Where we are at Carrowcrory, Co. Sligo is where it is said that Kevin was born and raised to be a chieftain, as the bards related, but instead was ordained here at Toomour Monastic City, one of 7 such sacred cities around the ancient sacred mountain of Céis Coarran, the mountain of the "woman of the rowan carrying life". This place is the early place of wisdom for Kevin before before he was called to Glendalough. Part of the abbey where Kevin was ordained still stands and nearby a holy well of the abbey bubbles healthily, and still supplies the local St. Kevin church with its Holy Water. Tonight the weather has just brought in a thick fog over our part of Co. Sligo. It was so clear last night at 98% full moon, though..Yes we are at the veil between two worlds here, Liz xxx The xxx some of us still put to finish letters is actually an ancient symbol to send a blessing to the person reading. It is the symbol of the returning swans of Bride (Brigid) in flight that should be arriving here tonight or tomorrow night to bless us with Bride's protection until next February. In our local St. Kevin's church there is the symbol of the swan in flight coming down to earth in a crucifix image, just like the Cygnus constellation symbolized as a swan flying down but is actually a crucifix of stars. On the eve of this Celtic Year end, a neighbour, once owner of our delightful restored thatched cottage, passed away. Claire Roche performed Amazing Grace and The Lord Is My Shepherd towards his coffin in front of this Cygnus symbol, and Claire was performing to the right of this. To the right of the Cygnus constellation in the sky is the constellation of Lyra, the harp. So many illustrations of how thin veils can be when we open our eyes and hearts to them. So to be in the present, in the traditions of this part of Ireland now, heres wishing you the blessings of Bride to protect you through the winter of the northern hemisphere and to bring you towards harvest abundance in the southern hemisphere xxx
11/02,2009, at 17:54
Liz, that was a beautiful reflection! I'd like to share a blog entry I made yesterday that contributes to the discussion of thin places and times. Connected in God's Love I write this entry on the occasion of All Saints' Day in the church's liturgical year--November 1. Our society just widely celebrated Halloween, the evening before All Hallows' (Saints') Day. Today and the day following (All Souls Day or All Faithful Departed) is a special time for the Christian community to remember and give thanks for being connected through God's love with all those who support us in our lives, the saints who have gone before us who are witnesses to the spiritual foundation of our living, and also our personal circle of people who have touched our lives but have died. That sense of being connected, even with those who are no longer living, is a powerful spiritual dynamic which can have a positive and negative side to it. In grief we might feel deeply connected to a deceased loved one and have that as a consolation--but we might also feel the pain of disconnection and insurmountable distance. Some of my directees or former parishioners have had things they wished to say to a loved one but death or incapacity came too soon for that to be expressed. And sometimes we miss people terribly. Times like All Saints' Day can be a special time, poignant and tearful perhaps, where we can be with a community that honors those who have been important to us and pray for them, and remember that by God's grace we are in communion with all the "saints" past, present, and yet to come. Scripture gives us some hints of that connectedness. I think of Jesus' words in the gospel of John that he is the vine and we the branches (15:5); or Paul's moving statement of faith: "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:38-39). That connectedness as a spiritual reality is something that I can occasionally intuitively, prayerfully, sense; and often just simply take on faith. There are times when I will pray to God to "pass" this or that little message onto my deceased loved one. Or some moment will come that reminds me of someone who has died or is geographically distant and I'll just speak to that person as an act of...how shall I name this...imagination?...faith?...trust that on some deep level we are all still connected? I know that in my heart, my inner world, there is room aplenty for the living and those who are no longer alive on this plane of reality; time and space are not such linear things there. That ancient Celtic intuition of "thin places" seems to be much more accessible. I love this prayer from the Book of Common Prayer (p. 395): Almighty God, by your Holy Spirit you have made us one with your saints in heaven and on earth: Grant that in our earthly pilgrimage we may always be supported by this fellowship of love and prayer, and know ourselves to be surrounded by their witness to your power and mercy. We ask this for the sake of Jesus Christ, in whom all our intercessions are acceptable through the Spirit, and who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.
11/03,2009, at 16:36
I remember my own "thin place". About five years ago I visited Glastonbury and climbed The Tor. I had been hit by a car in Piccadilly Circus and sustained a dislocated and broken shoulder, plus numerous bruises. As I climbed the Tor, I had to walk slowly, due to my injuries, and as I walked around and around the mount and ever upwards, I felt as if I was in another time and space. I felt as the pilgrims from long, long ago must have felt as they climbed up to St Michael the Archangel's Church atop the mountain. It was an amazing feeling, as I drunk in the ever unfolding view with every step. I recognised that I was on sacred ground all the way. When I reached the top, and touched the stones remaining, I felt completely at one with all. Very much the feeling was of "a communion of saints and souls". Whenever I think of that time, or see the photos, I am back there, with only a thin veil between all those centuries ago and present day. Thank you for helping me remember again.
11/03,2009, at 16:41
Thin places ---Iona Abbey, Scotland Columba's friends The invocation had caressed in song the candle-lit stone walls, a summons to a grace-filled moment undefined, except by the Spirit's echoes through the ancient Abbey's beams and the spine a-tingle in the prayer-filled air. A weightless press of presence brought me to my knees that night, an anonymous pilgrim in an anonymous circle gathered for Iona's Tuesday prayers: Healing for 'whatever harms us' found two hands upon my head, and then the sudden soaring sense of millennia of saints, gathered round, close-drawn, encompassing me in one-ness in this sacred time and place. ...Just to sense that all who had ever prayed on this ancient windswept isle now prayed for me ! Their souls at one with those who breathed the healing prayers that night ! And when at length I found my way, back to the chancel chair, there in the soft pink afterglow and numinous shadows, I saw the scatter of white feathers on the ancient prayer-worn flags, and knew it true. Robin Pryor Iona Abey June 1997
11/04,2009, at 08:27
Over the past few years, I've come to know that thin space is everyday space. I learned this as I sat month after month in our Taize services and felt the change in the room as we prayed together. Today, two of my favorite thin places are my kitchen and The Quiet Room at my church - the room where I offer spiritual direction. Both rooms are filled with sunlight and look out over gardens. Both rooms have been places of extensive conversation and reflections - places where we have grown older and where we've grown deeper in our inner knowing of God and life. I now understand whenever we pay attention to God's Spirit, She shows up bringing with her thin space.