TRANSCRIPT: Notes From Dunfanaghy 9 – Thin Places
Hi, it’s Megan. Welcome to today’s Notes from Dunfanaghy. Today I’m thinking about thin places.
So there’s this idea in Celtic spirituality, and I think, you know, lots of traditions and cultures around the world have a very similar idea. And the saying goes that heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in thin places that distance is even shorter. So it’s this idea that there are particular places in the landscape where the veil between this world and the other world is particularly thin.
And there’s a great book called Thin Places. It’s a memoir by Kerri ní Dochartaigh, who is from Derry. And in her book — obviously she talks about thin places in many different ways through the book — but at one point in it, she says: are these thin places spaces where we can more easily hear the land, the earth, talking to us? Or are they places in which we are able to feel more freely our own inner selves?
And so I quite often share that quote at the retreat, because I think, to me, it doesn’t really matter, right? Is what is happening here that we’re hearing the land speak to us, that we are accessing something from the other world, some kind of wisdom, some kind of insight, some kind of connection? Or is it that in these places, really what we’re listening to are the whispers from within ourselves?
I don’t think it really matters where you fall on that. I probably think it’s both. But the thing that I think matters is that, whatever exactly is happening, something is happening. And we are able to access some kind of clarity and fortitude and resilience and insight that is very difficult to access in the midst of our everyday lives.
So that’s one of the reasons why I’m drawn repeatedly to Donegal and to Dunfanaghy. Obviously, my story and my family are rooted in that place, my history is there, but also it’s because it has these qualities of a thin place. Like, I go there and I physically feel different, the clarity of thought is instant when I go there, in some respects.
It’s also — it’s remote. Jan, who is a long-time client and friend of mine, who has been to the retreat many times, the first year he was coming, he was figuring out his logistics, and he said to me, “Dunfanaghy isn’t even in the middle of nowhere, it’s at the end of nowhere,” which I accept. But the beauty of the remoteness of the landscape and the places is that there are large parts of it that are still untouched, it is rugged, it’s raw. I think that is why it is a thin place, and it’s able to kind of hold us in a way that we can access something deeper within ourselves or within the landscape.
And I like to think of the retreat as kind of like a thin place twice over. So we are going to this landscape that is a thin place. We are going and we experience the wildness of the Atlantic on the day when we focus on the sea. We track across some sand dunes and we go to the beach that you can’t access by road. And quite often we’re the only ones on that beach for the day. And the sound of the sea is just intense — you really are immersed in the wildness of the Atlantic and the landscape.
And, you know, so we’re immersing ourselves in this thin place, but also the group that comes together for the retreat is in itself a thin place. I think communities can be thin places.
And it makes me think about what my friend Peter Jacobson, who came on the first retreat, said to me. In the run-up to that retreat, I was just getting a little bit stressed out about, like, oh, I got everything prepared, is this going to come together, is this going to be good? And he said to me, all you have to do is get us all there — that’s enough. And that is so true. And I’ve thought about that again and again and again over the years.
The group that comes together is a thin place. Everyone comes with their own stories, they come with their own reasons, they have felt the call to be there that year for a particular reason, which maybe isn’t even apparent to them until after the fact. Quite often people think they’re coming for one reason, and then they realise, when they’re there, that actually there’s an even deeper reason that they weren’t conscious of. And so the group itself is a thin place.
And so I’m very conscious this year, as I’m preparing more than ever before — I think I’m trusting in the landscape and I’m trusting in the group that is forming, and I am being very conscious about having a light touch. And I am curating this thing — I will come with all of my materials and all of my ideas and concepts and exercises and all of that stuff, but also it will be very flexible, and I will have a very light touch, to make sure that we can sink into the thin place of the group and the thin place of the landscape.
So that’s what I’m thinking about today. I’ll be back tomorrow with more notes from Dunfanaghy. Thanks for listening.