As my muscles strained, pushing me from one step to another, I found myself in awe, not for the force behind my legs as I clambered up and down the stairs (1,920 steps in total), but for the depth of a story I was listening to on The Moth.
The woman spoke of her childhood, her grandfather, and the spiritual realm that connected her life infinitely to these things. Where the story gripped me was when she started speaking about her time in Scotland and the thin places which turned her life upside down.
The term "Thin Places" comes from Celtic tradition. They believe the distance between heaven and earth is merely three feet and in 'thin places' it is even smaller. These places don't have to be religious, but they are inherently holy or divine.
These moments are what keep my soul alive. When I sit on a sand dune, watching the sunset over Lake Michigan in the summer, when I am surrounded by my community, when I stand on the coast of California and watch the waves crash against the cliffs of Big Sur... in Denver, the streets of New York, the L in Chicago... Oxford, the UP, moments and places where I have felt the infinite.
There is more to this world than meets the eye, there are layers, realms, we can only feel and experience. The Celtics call them the "thin places", I say "here, heaven is kissing earth", and the Apache believe that, "wisdom sits in places"... the sacred, the beautiful, the mysterious. These things hold my heart.
xx
