Wanderings...

My Bags are Packed...

A good traveler has no fixed plans.

-Lao Tzu 

 I recently met with a group of people who will be accompanying me to Ireland next year.  None of them have been to Ireland before and they were bubbling over with questions, which is only natural.  Before I began to approach travel as pilgrimage, I too wore the somewhat heavy mantle of "tourist".  Schedules, agendas, "must see's" were most important and I made lists and lists of  lists.

   Now I have a totally different approach because I try to travel with a pilgrim's heart and not a tourist's mindset.  I make general plans and reservations but the minute I board the plane I leave all expectations behind.  I keep my heart and mind completely open to the serendipitous, the spontaneous and the spur of the moment.  I expect, no, welcome, the unexpected.

   My week down east was a perfect example of the unexpected.  Coming across the books by Brian Flynn reminded of the stone beach I'd visited 16 years ago on Grand Manan.  Reading the introduction I discovered there was such a beach right there on Campobello!  I asked the attendant and she showed me a map of the island where I could find these marvelous stones and off I went on a search that certainly wasn't on my "agenda".  The serendipitous, the spontaneous and the unexpected all at once!


   My friends and I will spend a week together next May in "John's house" in Ballyvaughan where I'll introduce them to that magical thin place, The Burren.  It is the first leg of my month long Threshold Pilgrimage.  (You'll hear much more about that in the months to come.) After a week in community, I'll leave for a solitary retreat to Iona and they will be on their own.  I've encouraged them to just wander.  To follow their hearts GPS and see where it leads them.

   I've always had this wild idea of going to the airport one day and letting circumstance and whim decide which plane I board and where I end up.  No plans, no reservations, no expectations.  I would simply  trust I'd end up someplace interesting and meaningful.  I would try to be like those ancient Celtic monks who would put to sea in their tiny curraughs with no rudder and no oars...content to let the sea take them to a place of its own choosing, not theirs.  This complete suspension of control is the ultimate act of faith I think.

Click on the lovely quote by John O'Donohue below to learn a bit more about these wandering Celtic monks. 

I would love to live as the river flows,

carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.

- John O'Donohue

Waymarkers...

Read excerpts here...

   I've called them signposts or breadcrumbs.  When I recently finalized my trip to Iona for next year, I discovered a new term...waymarkers, and a new book.  After I booked my stay at the St. Columba hotel on Iona, I stumbled on a new blog by Mary A. De Jong, the author of this book.  Surprisingly, she was on her way to Iona at that very moment! I ordered her book and am now following her, day by day, as she visits this incredible thin place...probably one of the most famous thin places on earth.  What I like about the book is that it is also a journal in which you can write your responses to her reflection questions.

   This sort of thing happens to me all the time so I don't know why I am surprised every time it does. The synchronicity of occurrences is a constant wonder to me and I love it when the planets seem to line up.  This trip next year is a perfect example of it.  I will be spending a week in my beloved Burren on the first leg of the trip.  For the first time I will be there at the height of the bloom and I will be able to walk this amazing thin place in the company of orchids and alpine wildflowers.  I thought I wouldn't be able to rent my favorite house in Ballyvaughan this time because I would need 4 other people to share the house cost but I met a man at an art opening recently, quite by "chance" who said he and his wife had always dreamed of visiting Ireland!  The next thing I knew, I had another couple signing on and...Viola!  I'll again be staying in "John's house" in Ballyvaughan. (I call it that because it is where my friend John O'Donohue use to hold his Celtic spirituality retreats and it is through John that I discovered this amazing location).

   I had planned to travel to Glendalough, Ireland in September next year but as things began to shape up for the Spring I decided to add it to this trip...if I was able to change my reservation that is.  I just heard back that the little stone hermitage (that is what it is called, and after my visit to Thomas Merton's hermitage it has a whole new meaning for me...click on this link to see a video of the place) in the Wicklow mountains is mine for two weeks!  The trip is complete.  Three thin places in one trip!  Amazing...the planets really were all in alignment this time!

   How does this synchronicity happen?  I don't know.  I only know it happens and when it does it is good to go along with it.  Contemplative photography is like that as well.  Images draw us in and move us from one place to another and it is best to throw out the plan and follow along.



  

Living on the Edge...

The Thin White Edge

   On February 19th I posted "The Layered Landscape" and spoke about trying to reach the deepest level of awareness in the landscape.  I also mentioned that I'd only truly reached that profound state of understanding twice...once in the Burren in County Clare Ireland and once on the Western edge of South Uist.  Both those encounters took place on the edge of the sea and I don't think it was a coincidence.

   Where the sea meets the land is a "Thin Place"...a place in the world where the veil between the knowable and the unknowable is the most transparent.  I've also found it is a place that opens your mind up to unimagined possibilities. Perhaps it is the sea air that clarifies the mind or the pulsing energy of the ebb and flow of the tide but that place, that thin white line between the land and the water is a special place.  There the energy and synchronistic partnership between earth and sea is its strongest.  It stands to reason that these places would also offer the most possibility for insightful experiences.

    I suppose that is why I am so drawn to islands whose boundaries are defined by this thin edge.  Island people have the wonderful opportunity of living on this razor thin edge everyday.  I envy them.  Tomorrow I will discuss this love I have for islands but, for the time being, consider where you can go in the months ahead to experience this phenomenon of living on the edge.  Who knows what insights you will gather there.

On a Clear Day You Can See Forever...

The View from Abbey Hill

   The photograph on the right is of one of my favorite spots in the Burren region of Ireland.  Located on the northern edge just outside Belle Harbour, it is called Abbey Hill.  While the view is spectacular, with Galway Bay in the distance, it is more the spirit of the place that draws me here each time I visit.

   As it is in so much of the Burren, there is a sense of time suspended here; held within the cracks of the limestone is a distant past and you can feel the pulse beat of those who have gone before...the ancient monks, the farmers, the warriors and the saints; they all come together in this place.

    You may think you are sitting alone on the rocky outcropping, enjoying your lunch or sketching or simply breathing in the beauty of it all but you would be wrong.  I came upon this face carved into a stone here and its enchanting demeanor captivated me.  It has come to represent the living presence of the place for me.  The past is never truly past here...it blends quietly with the present in countless ways creating the unique layered energy this site has. It is one of the many "thin places" that exist in Ireland.

   Time in the West of Ireland, as my friend John O'Donohue loved to say, is more than calendar time and it is here, on Abbey Hill, that you can sense it best.  That is what I meant by the title of this post..."On a clear day you can see forever". The "forever" reaches backwards as well as forwards.  This location is a kind of crazy quilted history stitched together with the wind and the rock.  The past, the present and the future blend in splendid synchronicity.  This is where I go in my mind when the world is too much with me...everyone should have a place they can withdraw to, if not in reality then in a photograph.



  

The Annaberg Encounter

   I have always defined "Thin Places" as a site where the material world and the spiritual world co-exist and it is possible to move more easily between the two. I have always thought of them as peaceful, quiet places. Not so!  I found a thin place on St. John that stunned me...so much so that I has inspired to create images in a radically, for me at least, new way.  That place is the Annaberg Sugar Mill.

   It was my first full day on St. John and I went by myself to the sugar mill site. Since I was alone I decided to sit and do my visual listening exercise. It was a beautiful location  high on a cliff over looking the sea and the ruins were well maintained and extensive. The sensation of the place was, however, foreboding and uncomfortable. The sun was shinning in a bright blue sky with soft white clouds but I didn't get the sensation of peace...just suffering and oppression.

   As a walked around later, trying to photograph the buildings, I knew that I had to find a different way to translate the landscape. Warm, soft color wouldn't do nor would my typical black and white style. I sat down and wrote, extensively, in my journal.  I knew that I would need to reflect for some time before I would know what I needed to do with this place.  These images are a rather unusual combination of solarized and infra-red processing.  It got me the effect I wanted to convey the emotion of the place. I'm not sure I'll use it again but isn't it wonderful that digital processing allows such experimentation!

   This is why I think photography, especially digital photography, is such a valuable way to enhance your contemplative practice.  It can make concrete your feelings and emotions in unexpected ways.  It also gives you an artifact to stimulate new thinking and reflection.  Later on, you have a visual record of the experience that transcends and illuminates the words in your journal. Some people bring back pretty postcards from their travels to new places...I try to bring back evidence of deeply moving encounters as well.

   When I got back to my friends house and told them of my experience at Annaberg, they told me some of the history of the place.  All the sugar mills on the island employed slave labor but the slaves at Annaberg sometimes committed suicide by leaping to their deaths from the cliffs rather than endure further torture by the slave owners. This was a unique and horrible attribute of the place. That must have been the energy I felt while I was there. I visited other sugar mill ruins on St. John during my week there. They all had a sadness about them but none had the profound affect Annaberg had on me. This was a totally new kind of thin place for me. Before I left Annaberg I spent some time sitting with my back to ruins and looking out to the sea.  I needed to try and clear my mind from what I had just experienced and, thankfully, I did. I felt an up swelling of  peace as I gazed out over the turquoise sea.  If we want to embrace the good in the world, we have to be willing to look at the bad. Taoism teaches that in even the deepest black there is a spot of light.  THAT was the message I took away from Annaberg that day. I think I will amend my definition of thin places by including an old Apache proverb:

"Wisdom sits in places."

      Thin Places are sites that prompt reflection and will always affect a person on a deeply personal level if you allow yourself to fully engage in it.  Sometimes the affect is peaceful and uplifting and sometimes it's immensely sad. In all thin places, you'll walk away a different person than you walked in as. For that reason, as a contemplative photographer, I will continue to seek them out wherever I travel.

  

Thin Places...

Photograph by Andy Ilachinski

   As I wrote about in my series of posts on the Characteristics of the Photographic Sage, Qi is the essential energy that flows through all things and in all places. It is what the contemplative photographer seeks most earnestly.  Some places seem to allow you to tap into this energy more easily.  As you sit quietly, listening to the landscape, you can hear  its message with crystal clarity.  Sometimes, your sense of time is warped and while you may think you have only spent a few minutes there you discover that, in fact, it has been much longer. These places are called "Thin Places".

    There are many famous thin places all around the globe.  The Ancients viewed them as sacred sites and built many of their monuments on them.  Callanish, on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides is one of them and the Ring of Brodgar in the Orkney Islands (located off the Northern edge of Scotland) is another.  Photographer Andy Ilachincki wrote about his experience among those stones in his wonderful blog. (I've included a link to it on this site.)

 "As I wandered around with my camera, looking for angles and compositions,

.....I felt myself drift in and out of the time of the "here and now" into a more

ancient, and ineffable, time; a time that lurks somewhere in the shadows,

and is part of the very fabric of the megaliths themselves.....The Ring o'Brodgar

is - for  me - a physical symbol of timelessness and transcendence.  It is 

a place for serious contemplation and meditation."

Andy Ilachinski

    

     The real challenge for the contemplative photographer is to find these thin places in ordinary settings because I believe they do exist everywhere not just in the established sacred sites like Callanish and Brodgar.  They may be a bit more difficult to find in places where the modern world seems so dominate and the energy is more material than it is spiritual.  That is what I found when I visited St. John in the US Virgin Islands recently.  Nicknamed the "Beverly Hills of the Caribbean" (there was my first red flag!), I knew I would need to look deeply to find its thin places but I can assure you they were there!

   It is not by coincidence that you need to step away from crowed locations and seek out a quiet retreat....someplace where you won't have the noise of modernity to muffle the sound of the landscape. And, for heaven's sake, put the Ipod away!  I'm not opposed to music but all your senses must be alert. When I see tourists walking around in amazing landscapes with those ear plugs I feel a certain sadness. People have become so detached from the natural world, even from human contact, that their senses must be numb. This is no way to experience the world and definitely not something a contemplative photographer would consider.  I'll get off of the soap box now but it is something to reflect upon.

   One of the thin places on St. John was a remote site along the Reef Bay Trail, deep in a gorge in the middle of the National Park where archeologists have found petroglyphs carved into the stones around some natural pools and a small waterfall. (Both of these are nearly non-existent on St. John...perhaps that is why the ancient peoples thought this site was special.)  The moment I stepped onto those stones you could feel the energy and peace that surround the location. Sitting amongst the carvings, which some say could be as old as 10,000 years, with dragonflies hovering nearby (the only ones I saw on the island) you are truly transported. The image on the left reminded me of one I found on the Burren in Ireland and it immediately connected me to that magical landscape. There are fascinating sacred places all over the world and they are all thin places.

   I discovered a wonderful site for those interested in traveling to some of these special places. Not all are sacred in the normal meaning of the word. One of my favorite places, a place I have returned to year after year, is Concord, Massachusetts.  You can see it on this site.

 SPIRITUAL TRAVELS

   I could have sat there, listening to the whispers of these stones, for hours.  Unfortunately, we could only stay for a brief time as we had to meet a boat that would take us back.  These stones are accessible from the road after a 3 mile hike but we came up from the beach, a much shorter, 1.1 mile walk.  I do advise those visiting  this place to pack a lunch and plan to stay for awhile...it is worth a much, much  longer stay than I was able to make.

   One of my favorite blogs is THIN PLACES written by Mindie Burgoyne.  She is a writer and she leads travel groups to explore the thin places of Ireland.  I recommend you visit her blog.  I've provided a link below to one of her posts on visiting thin places...it's excellent. I agree totally with the title:

DON'T RUSH THROUGH THIN PLACES

   She also lists 5 keys to visiting these kinds of places and they are well worth noting in your travel journal for your next encounter with a thin place.

    In my next post I will talk about a place that gave me a complimentary experience to the Reef Bay site and which gave me way to reflect on phrase that has always haunted me.  "Where is God when the earth shakes?"  It was a terribly uncomfortable  place. My encounter with it stunned me and I had to find a whole knew way to create my photographs of that location. Was it a thin place?  If it was it was a kind I'd never encounter before.