"It's a time when the veil is just thinner," my friend Denise told me when I asked her about the feeling I had that the sacred was just so close lately. We were walking in the sunshine, colder than we expected, quickly to keep warm and let the light flood us. "Thin places," a Celtic term, also speaks exactly to this: moments when the wall between the sacred and the ordinary, the dead and the living, the holy and the mundane just seems thinner, and one world bleeds through to another, letting us feel the larger dimensions of what we're living.
I felt this when I woke up after another dream of driving or trying to get into a car on time — not so extraordinary a dream, but the feel of it was unusually fresh, alive and vibrant. I felt this later during my walk with Denise. I felt this during sunset when I watched the vibrant and clear sky turn orange on blue, all while talking with former student who lives in Puerto Rico about how we must listen to what our lives are telling us and enter into deep conversation with our callings. I feel this now as I type before the dark windows of my bedroom with Christmas lights looping around, each color its own miniature party.
A time when we can feel more of who we are — a thin place, a time the veil is thin as well as whatever separates us from our dreams awake or asleep. What dreams call to you now?
