Halloween

 ( art:  Barn Owl Full Moon by Angela Jayne Barnett)


It's a very chilly night. About 4:30PM, when I left school, the sky was roiling with grey and white clouds to the west, and in the east, deep indigo backlit by a strange sun . Thinks are trying to settle down after Hurricane Sandy.  We had rain and wind, and some without power - though nothing compared to New Jersey and New York.  We lost 19 trees on our property.

The chilly night reminded me of all the trick-or-treat nights of my childhood. How I loved that!  That was in the days of the 1950's when people feared the communists, not serial killers and child abusers and poisoners of candy.  I loved the Walt Disney annual showing of  "Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman"  and  the "Night on Bald Mountain" episode from Fantasia.
"Night on Bald Mountain" reminds me of something I read somewhere
 somewhere that on  Halloween night, the veil between the two worlds is very thin.  I was spinning a poem out of that... haven't gotten too far:

Thin places...

Places where the veil between this world

And the other world

Is thin..

Truth abides stays lives in thin places

Raw, hard-to-face truth...

I found these thoughts on a website about Celtic Spirituality called  "Thin Places"
 http://www.thinplaces.net/
on that site, the author, Mindie Burgoyne - Walking Through Thin Places, says

"Yet the comfort, safety and strength to face that truth also abides there. 

We become very small there,

Know something much bigger than us

a place where one feels that mysterious power , God...

"The place itself calls you, draws you into itself, transports you into the presence of the world beyond this world.  The thinness of place moves you into the presence of the mysterious power.  There, all things you perceive through your senses are charged, electrified, illuminated with the presence of that power...

The meditation room at Carmel is a thin place

The crypt at Chartres is a thin place

The grotto at Lourdes is a thin place

The Sanctuario de Chimayo is a thin place

Crater Lake is a thin place

quoting Mindie Burgoyne some more:

“once you’ve been in a thin place and allowed your spirit to absorb  that which transcends the senses, all need for definition ceases.  Our spirits learn differently than our minds.  All through our lives we walk through these places.  Some people notice the thinness.  Some do not.  Yet the idea of "thin places" is not new.  Memorials - made by humans  - have been marking thin places for thousands of years.  Ancient people, especially in Ireland and Britain were forever marking spaces as sacred and worth remembering, as if to say, "something special happened here."

They are often marked by human spirits that have gone before, felt the thinness and been changed by it.  Thin places not only transcend the senses, but transcend the boundaries of time and space.  While you’re there, time seems to stand still, and there is a communion with the human spirits that have walked there before and are yet to walk. Thin places are all about connection -  with God, with the Other world and with all who have lived, are living and will live in generations to come.”