There are places in the world where the walls of reality seem weak and another dimension seems nearer and clearer than usual, leaving you without words. Perhaps you’ve had that experience on top of a mountain, or at the edge of the Grand Canyon, or looking up in a medieval cathedral. There’s a poetic term for such locales: thin places. Writer Eric Weiner describes them as places where “the distance between heaven and earth collapses and we’re able to catch glimpses of the divine, or the transcendent, or as I like to think of it, the Infinite Whatever.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Thin Places, Where We Glimpse Other Realities”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
Sometimes when I’m hiking and I stop near the top of a mountain, the beauty and the stillness there feels otherworldly. It almost doesn’t seem real. It’s as if the sky is like this scrim that I could just punch my fist through and look through to the other side. It’s this profound feeling in a place like that, like you’re on the edge or on the threshold of something. Maybe you’ve had that kind of experience out in the desert, in that vastness, or overlooking the Grand Canyon, or maybe just an almost empty cathedral looking up.
And it turns out that there’s a poetic term for these locales. They’re called thin places. And thin places have been described as places in the world where the walls are weak, and another dimension seems clearer than usual. And author Eric Weiner has called them those rare locales where the distance between heaven and earth collapses. And we’re able to catch glimpses of the divine or the transcendent or, as I like to think of it, the infinite whatever.
But, you know, the power of thin places doesn’t necessarily have to be religious. I like what the essayist Oliver Berkman said about them. He said, we’re in the territory here of the ineffable, the stuff we can’t express because it’s beyond the power of language to do so. Explanations aren’t merely useless. They threaten to get in the way. The experience of a thin place feels special because words fail, leaving stunned silence.
And I should point out that if you Google the term thin places, you’re sure to see this popular story going around about the idea that thin places is a translation of an Irish Gaelic expression from hundreds of years ago, which is a very appealing notion. But I haven’t come across hard evidence that the expression in English has been around for more than a century or so. But in any case, I’m thrilled to have a name for these places. And I’m wondering, does that resonate with you?
Yeah, absolutely. Just a hundred different things came to mind. Some of them are very practical. But I also think about my time in Paris, which is in some ways overrun with tourists, in some ways can barely handle the people who want to come and see it. And yet, despite all that, if you have ever been in Paris in the snow, say Christmas morning when most shops are closed and most people are at home or even still in bed, and like I did, walked along the Seine with a friend in the falling snow, trudging your feet through the snow that has already fallen. It could have been a thousand years ago. It was astonishing. And I still, the hair on the back of my neck kind of stands up when I think about that moment with that person in that place at that time.
And so Paris is one of those strange towns where surely it’s finished. They say year after year, surely it’s done. And yet, and yet Paris is loaded with thin places. That’s super cool. Layer after layer after layer, right? Just all that history underneath. Well, we’d love to hear from you. What kind of thin places have you experienced and what was it about them that left you without words? Give us a call 877-929-9673 or email us. That address is words@waywordradio.org.
