Thin places in November

Walking around my neighborhood this fall, I saw many skeletons. Bones seemed to protrude from every lawn.

One evening, taking a walk in the encroaching darkness, a skeleton I hadn’t spotted noticed me. It was an action-activated Halloween display. My passing by caused the seven-foot-tall skeleton to emit a gruesome laugh. I literally jumped in fright.

But actually, I don’t mind those macabre decorations. Perhaps I’m enough of a descendant of my pagan Celtic ancestors to appreciate this fall festival. It was they who created the festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in), Halloween’s precursor, a night when we remember the dead.

And because I’m a Catholic, I appreciate even more the following celebrations of All Saints Day and All Souls Day. And there’s a connection.

Halloween, literally “All Hallows Eve,” leads into the day we celebrate the glorified saints we know are with Christ, and the next day, all those beloved souls who have passed before us.

Fall, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, presents the perfect backdrop. The sky darkens; the leaves turn hauntingly beautiful before falling to the earth. Our harvest nears completion.

It’s a marvelous time to contemplate our own mortality and the “great cloud of witnesses” spoken of in Hebrews 12:1. You can almost feel the presence of the other world around us, the veil, or thin place, between this world and the next.

The concept of thin places is also Celtic, and taking a prayer walk in the early morning as the sun illumines the orange leaves brings our hearts into closeness with the communion of saints, those gone and those still with us.

When I was recently back in my Midwestern farm community, I visited the graveyard where my Irish great-grandparents, famine survivors, are buried. I’ve always felt close to my great-grandfather, from Galway, who left his native home behind forever.

When I last visited Ireland, I had searched in Galway for a small, flat rock. And on it I wrote the word for Jesus in the Irish language, “ìosa.” When I visited my great-grandfather’s grave, I dug a small hole in front of his imposing granite marker and planted the rock. I offered him a bit of home, a tangible gift at his grave, a thin place for me.

Many people find the Catholic fascination with relics and prayers to saints macabre. In 2018, the arm of St. Francis Xavier was taken around Canada for the faithful to view. Jesuit Father John O’Brien accompanied the relic, and wrote that it is “very Catholic to have a spiritual experience through tangible things.”

After all, we are an earthy faith, a faith which believes we consume the actual body and blood of Jesus, a faith which recalls Thomas putting his hands into Jesus’ very wounds.

Remember that the body of St. Francis of Assisi was quickly buried under an altar to preserve the saint from his admirers literally taking pieces of him. And in Ireland, I visited a spot where it is believed St. Patrick might be buried. The site was covered with concrete, because so many visitors were taking cups of soil home with them.

Although some might scoff at this, consider our own society. At Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, you can see in the museum the bloodstained pillow that cushioned Lincoln’s head as he lay dying in the nearby Petersen House. There, we feel a visceral closeness, perhaps a thin place, with Lincoln.

Humans yearn for connection, and our faith provides it.

I won’t miss those skeletons on the neighborhood lawns. But I treasure remembering how close we are to our beloved, living and dead.

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