On Pilgrimage ...almost!

In less than a month, our group of 14 enthusiastic pilgrims from RUCC will embark on the first "Thin Places Pilgrimage." We will stay a week near Stonehenge, visiting the Stones several times, and spending time at other local sacred sites. Following that, we will travel to the Isle of Iona in Scotland (pictured above) to live and work for a week in their established Christian community, learning more about Celtic Christianity from those who live and breathe it each day.

Borrowed from the book The Heart of Christianity, which itself borrowed from the long history of Celtic Spirituality, the term "thin places" refers to those locations and events where the Divine is especially present and palpable...where the "veil" between this world of matter and the world of the sacred is so thin we can glimpse God. This may occur in our own backyard, in a conversation with a friend, while reading or eating or walking or, yes, even while traveling to ancient pilgrimage sites!

Author Marcus Borg notes, "...this way of thinking sees God as 'right here' as well as 'more than right here'...[it] affirms that there are minimally two layers or dimensions of reality, the visible world of our ordinary experience and God, the sacred, Spirit...'Thin places' are places where these two levels of reality meet or intersect. They are places where the boundary between the two levels becomes very soft, porous, permeable. Thin places are places where the veil momentarily lifts, and we behold God, experience the one in whom we live, all around us and within us...[in thin places] we experience God shining through everything."

The idea of calling this trip a "pilgrimage" also originates in the Celtic tradition. There is an old Irish story about two guys setting off in a boat without oars, being swept ashore near Cornwall, escorted to the king and asked (rather incredulously), "What were you doing on the sea in a boat without oars?" The story concludes with their joy-filled response, "But for the love of God we set out on pilgrimage, knowing not where we would land...!" So will our group be setting out for the love of God!!! Though we do know our geographic destinations, i.e. Stonehenge and its environs, followed by the Isle of Iona off the northwest coast of Scotland, none of us really know where or how or when the Divine will become apparent.

As I reminded the pilgrimage group when we met together recently, this is the Thin Places PILGRIMAGE...not the Thin Places TEST :-) We will seek to be open, attentive, listening to our Still-Speaking God and will happily bring you along from the comfort of your living room. No oars needed ;-)

--Rev. Dr. Sharon R. Graff