This place is known as a Thin Place. George McLeod said that here “Earth and heaven are separated by a cigarette paper”.
We are given a tour of the Church here, not as old as St Leonard’s and oddly with ferns growing out the inside walls. St Columba came here in 563ad (noticeably before St Augustine to Canterbury in 597).
Columba came here most likely exiled on account of a violent dispute that arose as a result of Columba breaking some unwritten copywrite rules. Anyway, then the Vikings made a mess of everything, then 1200s the Benedictines set up their monastery. Chiselled into the wall, gargoyle like, is a stone screaming face. It is acoustically in the optimum place for the preacher to aim her voice at it and it’s contorted face reminds you to keep it short.
Elsewhere there is a cat, as the symbol of contemplation (not convinced) and of a monkey, symbol of busyness. The point being the importance of balancing the two (see yesterday’s blog, especially the bit about me cleaning showers).
The late evening talk is about the community where they have started up Members and Associate members. The more he talks the more this sounds like a sort of religious order, like a Fransiscan tertiary, for here is a rule of prayer and worship and advocacy for justice. He speaks of miraculously answered prayers and counters the doubters with an old quote from McLeod, “if you think that’s a coincidence, I wish you a very dull life”!
I am wrong to think that the danger of being in this Thin Place is the fear of judgement. Like St Peter after the miraculous catch of fish, “away from me Lord for I am a sinful man”. You could sympathise with why someone might be wary of coming here. King Ethelburt of Kent refused to meet with St Augustine inside for just that reason.
But that’s not actually what this place is about. Perhaps like Boromir in the woods of Lothlorien finding that the only evil here is what you yourself have brought.
But in this Thin Place is a depth of love and peace and welcome that is quite overwhelming and awesome. Yes the views of seas, mountains, and the sounds of bleating sheep help but the soul knows you are held and loved.
A tourist came up to yesterday’s leader of morning prayer in tears. Her gay daughter is not welcome in her church and so it has become a painful place for her, but you have welcomed her and me. Ah, the healing power of unconditional love. It is transformational. And there’s the rub.
It takes a few days to allow this transformational love to seep in, to begin its restorative, healing, empowering, vocational work. Did you notice that? That is the cost of love, the hope of love, that in being loved we will be transformed into the person God has made us to be, is calling us to be. And with that comes an invitation not simply to receive the blessing but to become the blessing.
The problem of coming to a Thin Place is that God might call you, activate you, ask you to be an advocate for creation, and unconditional love and inclusivity.
At supper I chew over the bible story of Balaam’s Donkey (book of Numbers 22) as its a text I will be preaching on in September. What should I title the sermon. He suggests “Get off your ass”.
(Photo is of me walking across a golf course where they keep cows, or should that be a cow field where you can play golf?)