Bless the thin places & the ecotone

Hey friends. Grab a spot in my July 11th in-person daylong writing retreat at my little arboreal realm in Southampton, MA. Sliding scale registration and full details of the day can be found here. All genres and levels welcome. Lunch, snacks, community, and prompts provided. You might even get to meet Dan:

“There is in Celtic mythology the notion of ‘thin places’ in the universe where the visible and the invisible world come into their closest proximity. To seek such places is the vocation of the wise and the good — and for those that find them, the clearest communication between the temporal and eternal. Mountains and rivers are particularly favored as thin places marking invariably as they do, the horizontal and perpendicular frontiers. But perhaps the ultimate of these thin places in the human condition are the experiences people are likely to have as they encounter suffering, joy, and mystery.” -Peter Gomes

Last week, I hung out with a deer in my yard, beneath the conjunction of the Japanese maple and the old flowering cherry tree. No, really. A young buck with wee fuzzy antlers was eating clover and wild violets in my yard, and he let me sit on the undertree bench not ten feet from him. For an actual half hour.

Several times he looked right at me, wiggled his tail, then continued munching:

I named him Dan. Not that he cares about the human compulsion to name all spirits.

Dan was, however, back a few days later, off in the more meadow-y part of the yard. I didn’t want to push my luck; I nodded at him, he nodded back. Dan and me, nodding at each other within the ecotone. Then continuing on our paths.

Thank god/dess for clover. Thank god/dess for the thin places. Thank god/dess for the ecotone. May we see us all as clearly as we need to be seen.

see you at the veil,

carolyn z

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