​​​Dear LCC Community,

Celtic Christians speak of “thin places”—those locations and moments where the veil 
becomes permeable between the visible and the invisible… places where heaven 
and earth come close… places where we do not so much reach for God as notice 
that God is already here. Traditionally, these might be windswept islands, ancient 
stone chapels, or the edge of the sea. But over the years, I have come to believe that 
thin places are not confined to geography. They arise in our day-to-day lives, in 
relationship, and in the quiet chambers of the heart. 

 

We are just completing a sacred arc of thin places in our Christian calendar: from the 
inward turning of Lent…through the raw honesty and darkness of Holy Week…and 
finally through our resurrection story into the irrepressible light of Easter. 

 

God knows in these times we feel the need for resurrection every day from what 
seem like endless deaths… of justice and hope and basic goodness. We need the 
experience of resurrection not as an escape from reality, but as transformation within 
reality. 

 

Resurrection did not happen only once. It happens—again and again—whenever 
love refuses to be extinguished, whenever hope rises quietly in the midst of despair, 
whenever life insists on itself in places we had given up on, whenever we discover a 
thin place. 

 

We discover the thin places of resurrection whenever we practice kindness… 
togetherness… shared devotion to our ideals of equality and freedom, including 
freedom from want. Our grief can become a thin place. So can love. So can a 
moment of stillness when we stop long enough to notice what is already here. 

 

Where are the thin places in your life? Not only the beautiful ones, but the tender 
ones. Not only the peaceful ones, but the uncertain ones. Where have you felt, even 
briefly, that something more is present? Where has the ordinary shimmered with 
something sacred? 

 

May we open to these moments and share them. May we practice awakening to what 
has always been true: the sacred is close, love is at work, and even now, the veil is 
thin.

Here is a blessing by the late explorer of thin places, John O’Donohue, called “To the Dying:”*

May your spirit feel

The surge of true delight

When the veil of the visible

Is raised, and you glimpse again

The living faces Of departed family and friends….

 

May your heart be speechless

At the sight of the truth

Of all belief had hoped,

 

Your heart breathless

In the light and lightness

Where each and everything

Is at last its true self

 

Within that serene belonging

That dwells beside us

On the other side Of what we see.

​

Peace and blessings,

​

 Lee

​​

​*John O'Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings, p. 181

​

​

​

​

​

​

​​​​​