"Thin Places"

When you read this, my family and I will be with eight other members and friends of Covenant Presbyterian Church at Iona Abbey in Scotland. We are participating in the “Wild Goose Worship Week” from June 27 to July 3. The “Wild Goose” is a Celtic symbol of the Holy Spirit, and the Wild Goose Resource Group, who will be leading the workshops at Iona that week, is committed (“are” committed as they say in the UK) to worship renewal and helping congregations find new, innovative, and creative ways of worshiping together. I’m looking  forward to everything that we will learn and having a chance to share that with all of you upon our return.

The last time I was at Iona was in July 2009. My wife Emma and I brought our Vermont youth group to Iona Abbey for their post-Confirmation pilgrimage. I can still recall my excitement upon seeing Iona for the first time on the ferry from Fionnphort. It brought to mind the medieval pilgrims who would cry out, “My Joy! My Joy!” when they first saw Jerusalem. 

The isle and Abbey of Iona are often described as “thin places”—those places where the membrane between heaven and earth seems particularly thin. Where are your thin places? It might be in the mountains or on the beach or on a lakeshore or even in the midday quiet of the Covenant Presbyterian Church sanctuary as the sunlight shines through the stained glass window Celtic cross at different angles. It might even be in your study or bedroom or backyard rose garden. 

My prayer is that you will find or rediscover your own thin places and holy moments that transcend the ordinariness or the weariness or even the happy-but-not-quite-joyful moments of your current day-to-day reality.

I look forward to seeing you again soon after my family and I return home to Palo Alto on July 12.

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Jack