On this day last year

I took the train from Paris to Chartres.  It was a Friday in Lent, and on those Fridays, they take the chairs off the Labyrinth, which is designed right into the cathedral floor.

Not too many other people there.  I walked it.

Later, I wrote this poem:

 

Thin Place

 

I walk the labyrinth at Chartres.

The subtle knife can cut the veil.

I hear the whisper on the other side.

I stretch my hand and touch the air.

 

The subtle knife can cut the veil

where walls are thin as plastic wrap.

I stretch my hand and touch the air.

Heaven and earth just feet apart

 

where walls are thin as plastic wrap.

So glad to have the eyes to touch

heaven and earth just feet apart,

where eerie ears can hear the veil.

 

So glad to have the eyes to touch

a humming in the silent air

where eerie ears can hear the veil

the place itself has called to me.

 

A humming in the silent air

I hear the whispers on the other side

The place itself has called to me

I walk the labyrinth at Chartres.

 

 

In his essay  "Touching the Veil of Thin Places", Jean-Paul Bedard said:

 

"The Celtic Christians believed that there were mystical spaces, called “thin places,” where the veil between the holy and the human is traversed. A place in which the physical and spiritual worlds are knit together, and if we are so attuned, we can transcend the ordinary for a glimpse of the infinite. I’m sure you’ve been in such places jarring with kinetic energy, and simply by your presence, you are in someway changed.

"Thin Places are not necessarily sacred places, or peaceful places. I consider them to be places of dissonance, or transformational plateaus. The energy that flows through me is an experience that leaves my heart open — more grateful, more empathetic, and less alone. It’s a disarming feeling of being brought to your own attention, knowing that you are forever changed by the experience. "