Thin Places

In early Celtic thought, "thin places," were thought to be real geographical locations where the boundaries between the past, the present and the future, somehow had worn thin.  They believed that being in those localities could afford a special mystical glimpse through the thin veneer of time, allowing one to suddenly become vividly aware of an ancestor, a particular truth, or even an event that had not yet occurred.  I love this notion of a thin place.  It speaks of a having a spiritual awareness not plugged into normal 'matter and motion,' which we have accustomed ourselves to accept for reality.   Especially for me, when I think of my professional training, in the halls of scientific inquiry and validation.  It strikes me that the closer I look at the physical realm, the more spiritual it becomes.  In macroscopic terms, you can go straight up for millions and millions of light years, eons and eons of time, and never hit a wall.  In microscopic terms, you can scope down on a cell, into the molecular 'bilayer', past the limits of a microscope, into an atom, then find subatomic energy.  And what holds all that together?

When I was walking home from work today I noticed, up the sidewalk a ways, a brightly colored driveway, and I knew at once it was pavement that had been painted with chalk.  As I stepped closer, I was amazed at how beautiful it was.  But it was just stick figures, obviously done by some very young kids.  When I got there I was intrigued by the whole scene.  I had just finished a pretty arduous day, the sun was lowering in the sky, the birds were chirping loudly.   There were rudiments of an alphabet, which at first glance, I took for just a hodge-podge of letters.  As I pulled up to a stop, I finally made out the words, Christopher and Samantha."  This was  a very thin place for me.