My Stories (7): Thin Places: for good or ill

There is a belief amongst many people of faith, deriving particularly from Celtic spirituality, that some places on earth are ‘thin places’, in the sense that the ‘veil’ between things normally perceived and a deeper or more ‘ultimate’ reality is much less than normal. Here, those open to such awareness may find themselves closer to God or to the deeper spirit of life.
In 1995 I found myself in three such places, while travelling on a sabbatical leave.

The first such place was the site of an appalling gun battle in Waco, Texas, where a cult known as the Branch Davidian had lived. This group, led by a ‘charismatic’ modern-day prophet named David Koresh, had been preparing for what they believed would be the ultimate spiritual war, Armageddon. Koresh was a ‘bible teacher’ who also managed to persuade many people to join his group, and among them to submit their young daughters to his sexual advances. It was not for this reason, however, that the US federal authorities sought to close this ‘cult’ down: rather, they were concerned about the group’s war-like intentions and their armaments. In February 1993 federal agents commenced a siege, which ended on April 19 in a gun battle, then a massive fire. 76 pf the 85 members of the group were killed, including 9 Australians I later learned.

I visited this place in 1995 while staying with a colleague in Fort Worth. We were going to Waco for another purpose and his curiosity led us to try to see this place. To our surprise and some frustration, we found that local people always gave us slightly incomplete directions as to where exactly it was (four times). It was as if they did not want us to get there. Eventually we came upon the site, now with a huge mound of rubble bulldozed from the wreckage, and a grove of trees and small memorial stones, one for each deceased member.

But approaching the site we were confronted by hand-made signs announcing that this was an omen of a greater apocalypse yet to come. From a caravan parked nearby one man came forward to offer us a brochure explaining the ‘biblical warnings’ of these things. Another person offered us an alternative proclamation, the ‘correct’ reading of the events past and future.

Here I felt the presence of evil, real evil masquerading as biblical teaching. These people were consumed by the horrors of what they had been through, and no doubt suffered much disdain from the local communities. I felt only terribly sad for them.

Never was it more clear that a little bit of (biblical) knowledge is a dangerous thing.
And with it, the horrible combination of a charismatic person’s sexual predation and the credulity of people who might hope for a radical transformation of the world.
False promises, false hopes, and deadly delusions. All in the name of God.

A month or two later we visited the island of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland. There today the ‘Iona Community’ lives and prays, and many people go there for retreats and personal renewal. A community first gathered there in the year 563, led by St Columba. In the twentieth century the community, which had basically ceased to function, was renewed and the Abbey restored. It is now a vibrant network, offering significant worship resources and advocating for peace and justice around the world. The island has also been the burial place of Scottish kings for centuries.

Here too is a ‘thin’ place, where amongst the open skies and brisk breezes one is aware of the profound vulnerability of our lives and the deep acceptance of us all.

Here, where ancient structures, celtic crosses, gravestones, and stone houses all reflect the endurance of things in the face of weather, change, human neglect and human attention—here, one can sense who we really are. We are just not that important., and yet, too, we are part of it all—and nothing will take either of those things away from us. Here one may sense the reality of things, or as Gerald Manley Hopkins put it, ‘the dearest freshness deep down things’. (From ‘The grandeur of God.)

Then, a month or so later we visited Assisi. We were staying in Rome and took the train to Assisi. I had so longed to go there and was not disappointed.

We visited the Basilica of St Francis—a year or so before an earthquake damaged it very badly. It’s an intriguing place. In the centuries after his death,  Francis’ followers could not agree on what kind of building would best honour their founder: a simple structure, without elaboration, or a more conventional cathedral with the finery associated with that concept. So they built both—one on top of the other! — and beneath it all, the crypt where a small chapel is located, and the relics of the man himself are preserved.

Then a short distance further on is the Basilica of St Clare. Francis’ spiritual companion—and it was here that I found the large cross before which Francis was praying when he began to sense God’s call to him to ‘restore’ the church. It was a wonderful thing to kneel before this cross, as he had done 800 years earlier.

One of the biographies records the story that at first Francis mistook this calling, and went out and found a tumbled-down church building, which he tried to rebuild. Perhaps only through this experience did he come to comprehend a much more pervasive need for renewal, but his focus on the material and practical expressions of spirituality, including his love for animals and birds, continued all his days.

Every day, thousands of people visit the small city of Assisi. Its narrow streets are clogged with traffic, including many large tourist buses, and the central parts of the town have the inevitable tourist shops with a seemingly endless array of souvenirs.

For all that, I found this place to be pervaded by an astonishing peace. I was of course very familiar with the ‘Peace Prayer’ attributed to Francis, but while that was no doubt in my mind, there was something much more profound here—beyond words, and in spite of the noise and traffic.

Here was a ‘thin place’, where the presence of a peace beyond all the fuss and bother of life invites us to settle, to know ourselves and each other as held, held and cherished, by that same spirit who sings in the birds, dances in the insects, and sways towards us in the trees. Here, too, we are invited to know who we are and where we belong.

As it happened, on the train trip back to Rome I found myself thinking of an older couple we had known and loved in our years in Hobart. To my great surprise, that evening I received a letter from the husband, informing us that his wife had died a month or so earlier. I have long been convinced of a profound spiritual connectedness between us all. As a student I had encountered the idea of a ‘collective unconscious’, a kind of connection between members of a community. On this day, having visited a ‘thin place’, I am sure that this is how I came to think of these friends and to receive in advance of this news an assurance of comfort and the life in which we are all held.

I continue to live in the strength of such ‘thin’ places. Perhaps indeed every place has this reality, ‘deep down things’.