The title of my book, Thin Places, comes from a notion in Celtic mythology that the distance between our world and the next is never more than three feet (i.e. just a little more than an arm's reach away). There are "thin places" where that distance shrinks and then vanishes, where you can glimpse some other world or way of being for a brief moment. Often, "thin places" are literal places, geographical locations that feel holy or otherworldly, but you could also imagine these kinds of thresholds popping up anywhere: in a hospital room, in a bar, in your apartment, in your relationship, in you. A thin place may also be a moment, a time when you were briefly suspended between a world/life that you knew and something totally new, different, awesome, frightening.
Your prompt for today:
Describe a “thin place” or threshold you’ve encountered. It could be a location, an experience, a relationship, a period of time. Describe it in as much concrete detail as you can: what did you see, smell, feel with your hands? How did it make you feel? Who else was there? What led you there? What did you do? What happened afterward? Did anything change? It may feel hard to describe—that's ok! Ineffable experiences are the hardest to describe. Get weird!
The only 'thin place' that I can really think of at this moment I've already previously written about (Day 13), when I'd suffered a brain infection and woken up in hospital, stayed there for a week, and for that week and about one more after that I was in a realm where the suffering in the world could not for a second hold down my hopes and dreams. But since I've already described that, that which I don't suppose I can ever find a contemporary, I thought I'd share some of the things I've learnt about something related to this concept of 'thin places', one which is rooted in Japanese culture and beliefs.
The Japanese believe in this thing called 'ma', most concisely but also most inadequately described as an 'empty space-time'. In space, it is a hollow three-dimensional area, measured by length, width and the typical and practical notions of how to quantify space. But in space, 'ma' is also a viewer's imposition of his perspective and his experience on that area. It contains a supposition of things that could fill it, and thus fills the hollow with potential. In this way as well, space and time are not mutually independent. A space is defined by a time and vice-versa. And with the supposition of a viewer to situate an object or happening in an empty space is also to collapse his past, present and future into the 'hollow' space-time unit. 'Ma' thus transcends the three-dimensional world that we know of, and enters a spiritual world, a world of no time or all time, a world of no worlds for it spreads across and intermingles boundaries. In the Shinto religion, the 'kami' or spirits that they worship are just an ineffable; uncontainable, unpredictable, and unrecognisable. They are believed to appear and disappear, and throughout many Japanese customs is the arrangement of the 3D world to suit these elements of the no-world. To create spaces suitable for the temporary presence of the kami, for forces of the transcendent and enlightenment. Homes, gardens, seemingly random places of worship delineated with the belief that they are sacred places of 'ma' where kami appear. The language itself embodies this belief, albeit more obscurely. Not linear, but upward and outward, strokes that are themselves matter as well as delineations of emptiness between them, and in my view, also creating pathways of sorts, a maze of many beginnings, turns, and ends.
How fascinating, isn't it?
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