Being Original

In the actual meaning of the word, being original doesn't mean trying to be different. It means being connected to the origin. You can't be original by trying to be original. You become original by staying true to what your heart sees.

~Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Way of Knowing: Reclaiming an Ancient Tradition to Awaken the Heart

There has been a lot of talk here about thin places since the whole purpose of pilgrimage is to go away to thin places to connect, reconnect and discover the Divine...in places where the veil between heaven and earth, mystery and reality, God and humanity is almost nonexistent. On the island of Inis Mor, the largest of the Aran Islands out in the North Atlantic off the west coast of Ireland, I discovered a place so thin that I felt myself connected to the Origin, the Source, the Heart of Creation.

There is a stone in the ground in a field on a hill near the Holy Well of St. Ciarán where ancient peoples "pre-Christian" as they are called, felt the Source, some might call it Energy, some might call it Life. They put the stone there and "worshiped" around it, called it holy and honored it as the Origin. When the Celtic Christians came in about the 6th century to the island, they too experienced the Energy, Holiness, Origin of this site, but now they knew that there was a Trinity in Creation that existed and was to be hallowed. So they carved crosses on this stone and others like it, and that because the precursor to the High Crosses that are found all over Ireland to which pilgrims have gone for centuries.

This discovery will take a very long time, maybe a life time, to process fully. I look forward to conversation about it, to studying about it, to dreaming about it, and one day maybe not in the life to understanding it fully.

Stay tuned, and join me in the journey.