This is beautiful, Katie. It truly is in the spirit of John O’Donohue, with your own unique and tender spiritual perspective. I read this on our next to last morning in the Prescott part of Arizona as I ready for a mountain bike ride. After a very difficult night, it was the perfect poem prayer to find this morning. Thank you!
This is absolutely stunningly beautiful,Katie. I have tears in my eyes as I read , and hope in my heart for the gift that can depict hard things in love and beauty, and in the enduring power of love that reaches across all the borders.
nothing could have prepared me for this poem today.. my day is officially altered, completely thrown onto a different course. Thank you kaitlin for guiding us out of “business as usual” and into a world where everything is poetry and memory.
thanks so much for reading Dwight, it’s a barely formed poem that caught me by surprise, but those couple of lines definitely seem to be where it was heading!! 🙏💗
Sarah, this is remarkable and really resonates with me in this space, place and time. I am really grateful for your poetry and your spirit which shines though each poem. 🙏🏻
Lovely. All allusions to “thin places” do seem to have some terrestrial element to them, as does your fine poem. I love your ability to see the tree and the roots and tunnels simultaneously.
When you cannot yet see
your longing
May you breathe
in the morning fog
and exhale your questions
May your sigh dissipate
as sunlight sparkles
and burns off the mist
May you see the day
clear and rise
May you know that
air and breath are
always talking
May you know this
grace is already
infusing into you:
lungs to blood to heart
May you remember how
longing lives beyond sight
for this very reason: to pull
you ever closer to
the heartbeat of beauty
***
I wrote this inspired by John O'Donohue's book of blessings, To Bless The Space Between Us ❤️
Love this, K!!
Much appreciated and respected writing here. I also enjoy the book that inspired you, and others of O’Donohue’s work.
John o'donohue rocks......
🥹🥹 oh my. this is the most beautiful prayer…. air and breath are always talking 💔 truly a work of beauty.
This is beautiful :)
Really needed these words today.
This is beautiful, Katie. It truly is in the spirit of John O’Donohue, with your own unique and tender spiritual perspective. I read this on our next to last morning in the Prescott part of Arizona as I ready for a mountain bike ride. After a very difficult night, it was the perfect poem prayer to find this morning. Thank you!
In that case, let's add one more line -- May you have a beautiful bike ride!
Ah, brilliant! And it was beautiful!
There is but a thin place
between You and I,
That thin place I call
“Beyond the veil.”
The first time I recognized
how thin it was for you,
“Mummy, I have two angels,”
An explanation of how often
you saw them ensued.
Critical illness when
you woke up and said,
“Mummy, I’m alive!”
First fall down the stairs,
“Mummy, I saw my angels.
They are with me all the time.”
Six months after your death,
“Mummy, I came a long way
to see you.”
This far distant place
you now reside,
Is but a thin place
And here I stay on the other side.
Woof.
This is absolutely stunningly beautiful,Katie. I have tears in my eyes as I read , and hope in my heart for the gift that can depict hard things in love and beauty, and in the enduring power of love that reaches across all the borders.
the scent of leaf rot and raspberries fallen,
the first frost fermenting that ripened world
into something new entirely.
the poem you had written
and tucked into my pocket
that starry night before, in its otherworldly aliveness,
our soft hands chopping kindling
to feed the woodstove in your cabin,
feeding the goats after dark,
the swaying pines,
the tremulous knowing,
the thousand unasked questions.
on that frosted dewy foot path
gathering raspberries for the market,
I knew myself to be the poem
and not the poet, my heart susceptible
as that folded piece of paper,
the hushed porosity I’d become,
the cloud-like sensation
of implacable love.
the world
was writing me, opening
my pages, tenderly and brutally,
to all that I’d forgotten.
nothing could have prepared me for this poem today.. my day is officially altered, completely thrown onto a different course. Thank you kaitlin for guiding us out of “business as usual” and into a world where everything is poetry and memory.
Love: “knew myself to be the poem and not the poet…” and “the world was writing me…”
thanks so much for reading Dwight, it’s a barely formed poem that caught me by surprise, but those couple of lines definitely seem to be where it was heading!! 🙏💗
These lines caught me as well!
The way you see and experience the world is so enchanting, and sensual.
Thank you for that kind reflection my friend… I think this prompt somehow evoked my taurus moon 🙃
I respectfully add, from my neck of the woods, that intoxicating marshy river scent
thank you for sending that gift, I gratefully receive it here in the high desert!! delicious.
Knew myself to be the poem ... the world was writing me ❤️❤️❤️ ah this is so tender and inviting into a sense of belonging
Thank you for reading it, it’s from a memory when I worked at riverberry farm in Fletcher!! I thought of you when I was remembering it.
I love picking strawberries at Riverberry! Such a beautiful place 🍓
The feelings
Come through
So easily.
And in a thousand ways
I've been let know
This is wrong.
So I often
Second-guess -
Believe I am
A mess -
When in fact
The thinness of my skin
Is one of my
Greatest gifts.
And when I surrender
I see - I know -
I was made for the in-between -
I was born to the threshold -
I am a liminal-liver.
And here,
In these thin places,
I can make my home.
Love this Sarah
Thank you Claire 💜
I so feel this too! The being "othered" and then reclaiming this way in the world. Welcome!
Thank you Vanessa 🥰 And what a 'way' it is!!
Sarah, this is remarkable and really resonates with me in this space, place and time. I am really grateful for your poetry and your spirit which shines though each poem. 🙏🏻
Ah I'm so pleased it resonates Larry - you are so welcome 💜
I wrote this one last January, but it feels right to share it today:
.
I wonder if
Thin Places
are not
where
we become
physically closer
to the divine, but
when
we become
aware of our
inherent closeness;
if Heirophany
is really an epiphany,
and the Veil
is our disbelief,
is our forgetting.
.
I imagine that
remembering
is like suddenly
being able to see
the mycelium,
the tree roots,
the tunnels and
the burrows, all
stretching beneath
the forest floor
in a vast network;
a dawning
realization of the
quiet and vital
connection,
ever-present.
Lovely. All allusions to “thin places” do seem to have some terrestrial element to them, as does your fine poem. I love your ability to see the tree and the roots and tunnels simultaneously.
Really really lovely. Thank you for sharing. ❤️
What is thin about this space?
Is it not my sense of self?
Stretched so taut it almost breaks,
Impossible to see
Through eyes that view eternity
As the only substance
Worth beholding.
A thin place
A crack, a break between
This liminal space
The veil between
Gossamer thin
The light shines through
I hold my breath
And wait...
"I hold my breath and wait..." I love this sense of expectancy at the end.
The one who fashioned this exquisite being
Beckons her to a field of freedom
Abundant with twinkling lights
And the warmth of moon glow.
It feels so far out of her reach.
Some days she touches its rim
But she gets spooked by its peace.
Maybe tomorrow…..
Some walls are hard,
you can bounce a ball off them.
Walls keep others out,
and keep me in.
But there are thin places
where walls are but arbitrary boundaries. In thin places,
walls are only there
if you believe as much.
In thin places, the wall, barrier, boundary, or sacred space between you and me,
dream and reality,
divine and mundane…
Is as thin and quivering
As a blade of grass
Yielding to the wind.
I am never close
and never far away.
Never fully here or not here.
I can never go over, under,
or around the thin places.
I can only go through.
But first, always first,
I need to Know
when I am near, or in,
thin places.
-Dwight Lee Wolter.
Some Thin Places
The bird nest snuggled against the chapel door frame.
The old yellow roses, every spring spreading further,
up and over the tall pines.
The towering walnut trees with their bright green leaves,
each year arching higher and higher into the sky
on the hill behind our house.
The stick-made den, low entry ways almost hidden,
sheltering creatures from the storm.
I find it significant that a “thin place” is a place. It is not a feeling, thought, epiphany or doctrine. It is a place.
Its a thin place,
The space between rock and soil
Yet when I lift the rock
I see life, completely royal
Dozens of bugs scurrying
None of them worrying
Busy, yet completely content
Thriving in this thin place
Different types of bugs
Each running their own race
None conforming
None performing
Simply being what they are
No better or worse
Than a twinkling star
From these beautiful bugs
We might learn our place
For this great big world we imagine
Is really just a tiny, thin place
So fun! Love this poem and the rhyming.
The space between rock and soil 🥹🙏 instantly transported me.
Doing yardwork yesterday and made a little rock cairn. The ground beneath one of the bigger rocks I used was full of wonder and activity.
Well, Kaitlin Curtice, you not only alluded to the thin places in your fine poem, but you also seem to have teleported us there.
Thank you! It was an incredibly tender, sacred moment for me.
What would I find
beneath the veil
I wondered.
Would I find
Freedom
That my tear-stained
Eyes—accustomed only to
Gaslit visions of a life
Carefully curated—
Could recognize
Seeing for the first time
Without the veneer
Thin though it was.
Would they appreciate finally
A vision of new life unfolding
Waiting to be seen?
Oh, I hear this deeply! eyes accustomed to the gaslit vision seeing for the first time. Yes!
god loves everyone.
pope leo starts erasing
The thin lines we draw.
I wonder, if I were to go back to Iona,
if I would find it different,
as nearly 13 years later,
my own landscape is so different.
You can't force an energetic fit.
Didn't realize how much I was trying to.
At that point in time,
I was aspiring to the better-known Mary
(unconsciously, as a good Protestant).
Love and marriage, yes, but
Marriage and motherhood--
you Can have one without the other.
Unlifting dread is helpful discernment.
In the mysteries of Divine pursuit,
a tiny upstairs office above rocks,
a borrowed apartment where I fried the power,
a Bosnian café, violin playing to illuminate a no,
these were the thin places
as I re-found myself,
helped by the other Mary,
who may be closer to Iona than ever I knew,
and so this time it might glow.