WRITING PROMPT 57
Finding Soul-Balm Suddenly…
A woodland thin place
Many years ago, I was hiking in the Connecticut woodlands along the Narragansett “Blue-Blazed Trail” in the state's southeast corner. Walking through a narrow gap in a trail ledge, I descended into a hollow surrounded by tall glacial ledges one finds in these woods. Suddenly, I felt it. I stood still and looked around. I listened, smelled, and wondered. It was the unmistakable sense that “this is a thin place.”
This place felt sacred, hallowed, and set apart from the ordinary. I wondered if native Pequots who wandered these woods long before Europeans pushed their way in had sensed this feeling here.
“Thin places”, as the Irish tell it, are locations where Heaven and Earth seem to intersect and overlap. They seem like Nancy described it in Writing Prompt 57; “a place that feels like balm to your soul.” Sometimes, they can be found at historic locations that others have identified hundreds or thousands of years ago. Monuments, like standing stones, have been erected as a sign of their presence. Others locate them along “ley lines.”
This feeling became something over time, a feeling that has redefined the idea of hope for me. I no longer imagine hope as a far-off day better than today. Rather, I experience hope as a very present emotion. A sense that, at any moment, I might encounter the divine. And since coming to that realization, first sensed in that sacred hollow, I have not been disappointed.
Sometimes soul-balm comes as a whiff of fragrance, the smell of soil during summer rains, or perhaps lilac blooming at the ruined doorsill of some forgotten farmstead. Other times, it envelops the body with energy or vibration, the “shem”¹ of a place. I have felt it as the harmonic weaving of birdsong with leaf rustlings. However it comes, I stop and savor it, taking in all the senses offer. Then, breathe a quiet prayer of thanks for the thinness of the veil in that place.
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Blessed are you, Holy One, creator of all things, who sends your whisperings across the thin and porous veil!
¹ “In ancient Southwest Asia, people perceived each other as vibrating with a particular atmosphere or sound, their “shem” in Aramaic or Hebrew. This sound was associated with their “name,” another translation of the word. It was as though human beings were condensed sound rather than mere outer appearances.” From: Douglas-Klotz, N. (2023). Revelations of the Aramaic Jesus: The Hidden Teachings on Life and Death. Hampton Roads, pg 5.
Refresh the Soul writer Trisha Lewis. talks about how she finds her practices; “Find the thing that makes you feel good and make it into a routine.” That’s the ticket! The photo of her at the monument at Hengistbury Head makes me wonder if that is a “thin place”!
The Rev. Ron Steed is an Episcopal Deacon in Southeast Connecticut and a chaplain at Lawrence & Memorial Hospital in New London, CT. He writes haiku and lyrical prose that he hopes will help others put the head and heart in right-relation.
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