Thin Places | a natural history of healing and home by Kerri ni' Docharaigh

I can’t remember why I decided to read Thin Places. I think you have to be in the right mind space to read it, and I was. I have always been fascinated by the idea of “thin” or “liminal” places, where the veil between humans and the divine is thin. This year, when I was thinking about what word seemed thematic for the year, “refuge” came up. I somehow associate refuge with those thin places.

Ireland, it seems to me, is a land full of thin places. I’ve never been there but I’ve read about it and love poets and writers from Ireland—John O’Donahue, Padraig O’Tuama, Seamus Heaney. It is no surprise that I would be attracted to a book called Thin Spaces by such an obviously Irish author as Kerri ni’ Dochartaigh (how do you even pronounce that lovely name?!). Here is a video of an interview with Maggie Smith.

Here is some of what ní Dochartaigh wrote about what “thin places” are:

Heaven and earth, the Celtic saying goes, are only three feet apart, but in thin places that distance is even shorter. They are places that make us feel something larger than ourselves, as though we are held in a place between worlds, beyond experience…Some places are ports in what can be—for many people—a life both unsettled and stormy, spaces in which you can leave that which is familiar, all that you hold to be true, and move closer to all that is unknown. Closer to what some may view as the divine, the otherworldly… (Thin Places, copyright 2021, by Kerri ni Dochartaigh, Milkweed Editions, published 2022, page 23)

ní Dochartaigh was born in Derry, Ireland, and lived through “The Troubles” that Ireland experienced in the ‘60’s and beyond. During this time of turmoil for the country, ní Dochartaigh lived a traumatic life that included a fire in her home, her father leaving the family, and much more. She ran away from Derry but then was drawn back to live there as an adult. At the end of the book, a memoir, she and her partner end up in a cottage in Correaly that her partner inherited. They thought they would fix it up and sell it, but ended up both being strangely attracted to living there.

Throughout the book, ní Dochartaigh sees signs in nature. She sees a fox, a particular kind of bird, a stone, and other such things that she notices at significant times and places. I had a friend at work from India who used to tell me he saw digital clocks displaying double numbers (like 11:11, 12:12, etc.) as a sign from his wife who had passed away. I dismissed his stories as superstition, and now I very much regret that. Somehow, I think these kinds of signs matter. Maybe they are coincidences, but that does not have to make them any less significant. There’s a saying that “there’s more to life than meets the eye,” and that seems more and more true to me every day. At the very least, these signs cause us to pause and notice. They evoke thoughts beyond the here and now and make us realize we are part of something bigger than ourselves.

I’ve tried to think of thin places in my own life. Right now, probably since I was just there, I think of Fremont Lake in Fremont, MI. Randy and I were just there, visiting his family, for about 3 weeks. We stayed at what we call “the lake house.” It is a modular home about the size of a double-wide trailer that his mom and dad owned and lived in during their retirement. It’s just a few feet from Fremont Lake, and I keep telling people that it feels magical to wake up to the lake every morning to see it in its many changing forms. Even when it’s too cold or hot to sit outside and look at it, there is a screened-in porch that the sliding door in the kitchen looks into. So when you are at the kitchen table, you look out at the lake. Here is a gallery that includes many photos of Fremont Lake.

Participating in communion at church is a thin place experience for me. Baptisms are, too, and other rituals that remind me of “the cloud of witnesses” around me.

I can’t think of any objects of significance. Maybe that will come someday. How about you? Do you have thin places in your life? Things or creatures that feel like a visit from the divine?