Thought for the Week: Thin places
Sue Proudlove reflects on 'thin places'
In April, on a day of low mist and gentle seas, I made an all-too-brief visit to the island of Iona. On an information board near the Abbey, I read that George MacLeod, founder of the Iona Community, had considered the island to be a ‘thin place’ where the veil between earth and heaven is almost nonexistent, hence its apparent spiritual ‘pull’ for many visitors over the centuries since the arrival of saint Columba. I wonder whether the concept of a ‘thin place’ in Celtic Christianity is linked to the idea of pilgrimage, which seems to be going through an upsurge in popularity. A pilgrim seeks not just to complete an arduous journey to prove their faithfulness; they also seek to reach a place where they can connect with a spiritual dimension, following in the footsteps of others who have sought that connection before them.
So, if ‘thin places’ blur the boundaries between the spiritual and temporal worlds, how does Iona have this effect? No doubt people are inspired by its beauty, peace, quietness, history and the ever-present imprint of past devotions in its graves and monuments; also, those visiting or staying a while may feel remote from many of the distractions of everyday routines and pressures. The concept of the ‘thin place’ also reminds me (ironically, given the author’s atheism) of Philip Pullman’s wonderful trilogy His Dark Materials. In the novels many different universes coexist; usually it is not possible to cross from one to another, unless you happen to come across a window cut by the ‘subtle knife’, or can cut your own way through as the knife’s custodian.
The idea of other worlds, close enough to touch and yet out of reach to all but a fortunate few, recurs in mythology and literature. As a child, I stood in a corner of a churchyard in Pembrokeshire hoping to see magical islands out at sea that were normally invisible to mortals. According to local legend they might be seen from that particular spot – but not that day.
A few weeks after visiting Iona I was in a park in the centre of Cardiff on a sunny Saturday in May, there were children playing, traffic was rumbling, dogs were being summoned, students were playing Frisbee, a group of middle-aged men complained bitterly about the unfairness of the world and a group of Quakers were holding an open-air Meeting for Worship. Not your archetypal ‘thin place’. But what if the distractions can themselves be a gateway, not a barrier? With openness and a willingness to listen, the sights and sounds of everyday life can connect us to our fellow humans and our fantastically complex natural and built environment. By attending to the Light and Spirit that suffuses the whole universe, not just the beautiful bits but also the ugly and the humdrum, maybe we can dispense with apparent boundaries between the spiritual and the temporal, wherever we are.
God is in the connections and the commonality: in the air we all breathe, the voices that float into my ears and the earth that feeds and holds us all.
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