The Clayborhood
The Union Project, where I take pottery classes and have a membership, recently had their "Mother of All Pottery Sales". Yes, it was good. There was a section where kids could make clay figures like Daniel Tiger or Donkey Hodie. It was called the "Clayborhood" tapping off the Mr. Rogers/Pittsburgh theme of Neighborhood, yes, with a capital N. This place is still soooo frickin' friendly.
Recently I've been thinking a lot about "Thin Spaces". Those places where you feel something that stirs something in you, maybe a glimpse of the Divine, a better world, maybe, or a spiritually heightened dimension, idk. Credited as a Celtic concept are those places where the earthly world can almost touch the spiritual, a peak into heaven, beauty and peace.
I think this extends to deep friendships, relationships, music, art... those conversations with dear friends; the freedom on my bike as I pedal along a country road flying along with the birds; being swung around in the middle of a kaheil by a sweet guy in a kilt, who passes me down the line while we "strip the willow"; Iceland; the Pittsburgh Symphony; sunsets; peach and blue sun rises; being still so deeply in love with my husband, Craig, and the spark in his blue eyes; the Ring of Brodgar; Taughannock Falls; cranachan; sticky toffee pudding; Lake Michigan; Costco pizza; Camille Carot paintings....
Ok, so that is my list (just getting warmed up, actually), but you get the idea. It's helpful to me to do the list sometimes, helping put things in perspective when I see the ugliness, carelessness, violence and hatred that is also this world. I encourage you to do your own list. Keep doing it until you run out of time, because you will find that you don't run out of "thin spaces".
I recently finished reading Bill Bryson's "A History of Nearly Everything", it came out a few years back, but I still highly recommend it. We don't know exactly how old our planet is, but roughly 5 billion years, give or take, and Bryson adeptly points out what an unlikely dance of chemicals and molecules and proteins and neurons and atoms and cells, and evolution, and much, much more, that all came together to make humans. Yes, unlikely/miracle (?). I don't take this for granted. There is so much more here than what is reported daily on Fox News (don't even get me started...).
I'm at Carie and Randy's peaceful and magical home in Woodstock, Vermont this week. Ahhhh..... It's a joy to take a breath, and re-set. I am so grateful to them for this space to do this, and their kind, calm, genuine presence. Even though I only brought one pair of wool socks with me, and wished I'd packed more (well, it is June, you know, Carie chided with a smile!), I feel, here, as I always have when visiting, that I'm in a thin space, which makes me wonder... Can we, mere humans, create thin spaces? If I am the same body here in Vermont, that also occupied my home in Pittsburgh, my former home in Ithaca, my time in Edinburgh...how do you take that same peace with you to less peaceful places? Is peace an energy you can store up inside you and let it seep out to say, Russia? Washington DC? East Timor? Or is peace and awe only confind to ensorcelled geographical settings?
Carie tells me that the blue and pink flowers come out at the same time of the year, together (equal opportunity among flowers?), and after they are gone then the orange flowers come out. No one knows why, exactly. Nor do we know how the wild orchid, the Showy Lady's Slipper, blossoms in the Eshqua Fen in Vermont every year around the 3rd week in June. Another thin space.
Linking back to A History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson would point out evolution and billions of years of chemicals and ions and nurons and whatnons that came together to cause these remarkable flowers to happen, and, again, no one knows exactly how. Do they live in peaceful community? Neighborhood..ahhh, thin space.
Thank you for reading,
amy
