Half a blog, mid-week, to make up for the fact I didn’t write one on Saturday because we were away and then the second Saturday we didn’t have internet, or a washing machine or a microwave! For a couple of blissful days we stayed in a Welsh long house in the borders. Old wood floors and a tiny half spiral stair case that for the first few days you needed two hands for.
I think some places do absorb peace. And that house was one of those places. It helped that it had a view across a long open valley, with lots of sky, and big comfortable beds and we had done a shop at Booth’s! I’m almost inclined to say it was a thin place. It certainly felt so for us.
At the end of Dorset is St Aldelm’s Head. A high cliff that gives you a view along the coast to the west. Perched up there is a square chapel, tiny, which has been prayed in for hundreds of years. That’s another thin place. Sit any where around there, in the building itself and you can almost feel God gently putting your inner self back into shape.
But sometimes I think we take thin places with us. I find I need a bit of sky and some leaves, or a view, or a cup of coffee, but above all five minutes. Five minutes to stop rushing around, five minutes to heap all the worries back onto God’s lap, five minutes to breathe.
