Thin Places

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Today I am back on Vashon Island where the rain has been unrepentant. It was a different mood two days ago, in Paris, when I spent time in Norte Dame Cathedral and Musee d’Orsay. The Orsay is home to paintings of many of the world’s most famous Impressionists. The energy in the museum–people of all ages and colors–is not in any way like a tourism diversion. There is a sort of deference here, some need to pay homage. Here, we see the work of mortals (some with very tortured souls), who painted and sculpted with passions that soared and touched other worlds. When you stand before great works of art–full of pathos and vigor, and a lust to experience every centimeter of life–it can be jarring, or a suave to our own unease.
In the Cathedral of Notre Dame, people milled, prayed, took photos (next to the French sign that said No photos), sat, talked quietly, lit a candle, pointed to the ceiling and the windows, and listened to the organ–music that floated and encircled and healed.
We wonder if we can ever connect at that level of awakening, and from what I can tell, we are always looking for ways to touch or access or acknowledge or release or tell or name.
The Celts talked about thin places. These are places where two worlds meet.
Walking the streets of Paris, my friend and I talked about thin places. “But no one place is more holy than another,” he said. I don’t disagree with that. But (quoting from a Rabbi’s son who went to the woods, because there he could talk with God), “I know that God is the same everywhere, but I am not.”
So. While God is present in the Cathedral and in the street, in the art and in the graffiti, I know that for one day, in two thin places, I was very different.

There is an indefinable, mysterious power
that pervades everything.
I feel it though I do not see it.
It transcends the senses.
Mahatma Ghandi