“Brought her home,” her brother said, as we finished spreading the ashes. The three-year-old picked sunflowers, and a breeze swirled some feathers among us. Those of us who subscribe to the belief that feathers are prayers picked one up to keep. The father of the person we were remembering allowed as how flowers from a child and feathers from God were a perfect end for our ceremony, so we moved on to the home place for refreshments, stories, and laughter.
The Irish call them thin places; locations where the other side seems close and we sense more than we can explain. The Black Hills is one of those places for Lakota people, which is why they take a dim view of having a mountain desecrated with the faces of people who dishonored their culture. But that’s a whole other story.
If you are someone who pays attention you’ve probably met some thin places too. I’ve found them on hilltops in pastures that my grandparents claimed, by a lake where I gathered with long gone neighbors watching hopefully for a bobber to disappear, at cliff dwellings in Arizona, at Fort Robinson, in Colorado in a certain room on the lower level of the Arvada Center, and once in a valley somewhere south of Moab.
The canyon is a thin place for some of my family members. We have sat among the pines to ponder and pray, to speak with spirits, or search for answers, as did the person whom we commemorated last week.
Other ashes rest in the canyon. A wedding was held there. The laughter of my children lingers on the slopes from times when our family went in search of a Christmas tree to cut. My first in-laws lived for a time at the bottom, along the river. The canyon seems quiet and peaceful at first, but if you really listen there are many voices that whisper on the wind.
Our world is too noisy, too busy, and too full of angst. Perhaps we all need to search and find our own thin places, and go there from time to time, if only in our minds.
Meet me here next week and meanwhile, do your best. Somebody might like it.