Thin places

A sense of completeness and completion today. I’ve explored some thin places – those special locations where it feels as if heaven and earth are so close that they almost touch. 

 The morning began with a communion and a word about daily bread, we ask for what we need today, not fussing about tomorrow. OK I get the message!

More time to explore the peaceful and quiet island notwithstanding persistent rain. Castle and beach today. Then I discovered the calm of the URC St Cuthbert’s Centre and the even greater tranquillity of the tiny Boiler House Chapel which used to be exactly what it said, tucked behind the centre. A peaceful refuge from the wind and rain. 

Once again struck by the numerous cairns all over the pebbly beach with the crashing waves as a backdrop.  I wonder who made these towers and who wrote their names and message in stones on the dunes?

I was taken back to earlier in my sabbatical when I had hoped to discover links between festivals and pilgrimage. Those quotes from the BBC documentary confirmed that people were drawn to festivals to experience something out of the ordinary in community ‘Festivals give you an experience you can’t get anywhere else. People like to be together in an environment where you can be yourself.’
This was borne out in the statistica research which commented ‘Festivals are indeed a unique experience,  which combine people’s passion for music with a sense of community. ‘

Is that the same as pilgrimage? I guess for many pilgrims ancient and modern,  community is important as is the thing that draws them to the experience.  On Lindisfarne I have met many groups who have come here to reconnect with their faith in a place which is both tranquil and associated with ancient spiritual practitioners. But there are also people on their own and many whom I am sure are not here for spiritual reasons. Yet even amongst these people I detect something that connects with the other.  My only scant evidence for this is glancing through visitors books in some of the Holy Places on the Island. Whilst some comments are clearly linked to a personal faith or knowledge of the Bible,  others  mention the peace,  restfulness and tranquillity that has been experienced. Thin places.

Deepak Chopra writes about spirituality from a place which he considers to be beyond religion,  but one in which God is very much alive and present. One might question the extent to which his notions are syncretic, but he does have something to offer those who might define themselves as spiritual but not religious, maybe festival-goers and cairn builders included.

Chopra speaks of three worlds that exist side by side. The material world – black and white,  Godless,  centred on ‘me,  I  and mine’.  The subtle world is transitional,  here are shades of grey, a quest for meaning and a sense that there might be something ‘out there’ The transcendent world is the source of reality and oneness. We move through this world guided by the Higher being which is inseparable from God.

Chopra suggests that these worlds overlap and people can move in and out of them. His subtle world is the one inhabited by people who raise their hands when Alt J sing ‘Hallelujah, who connect with something deep on the Mount at Greenbelt, who join a torchlight procession at Festival No6 and who travel across a causeway to place a stone in a cairn on Holy Island. People who believe there’s more to life than what can be touched, who are at ease with the momentary experience of transcendence. Our prayer might be that they will move deeper into the transcendent place. Our hope might be that they find this within  the faith that many of us hold dear. Our action must surely be to meet people in that subtle world, to go  with them and share community as they make pilgrimage.