The author defines thin places by a quote from Edward Sellner, an expert on Celtic spirituality as "geographical sites located throughout Ireland and the British Isles where a person experiences only a thin divide between past, present and future times, or places where a person is somehow able, possibly only for a moment, to encounter a more ancient reality within present time; or places where perhaps only in a glance we are somehow transported into the future."
Another author, Marcus Borg, defines thin places further, saying in The Heart of Christianity: " There are minimally two dimensions of reality, the visible world of our ordinary experiences and God, the sacred Spirit…"Thin places are places where these two levels of reality meet or intersect…where the veil momentarily lifts, and we behold God, experience the one in whom we live, all around us and in us."
O'Keefe wrote this book as a gift to her nine brothers and sisters, in remembrance of their parents who had died a few years earlier…three months apart. When their father died, the mother was already very ill, and the family knew her days were numbered, making their life/death experience actually one, lasted for three months. Their strong Catholic faith, their firm family bonds and their love for one another and for their parents brought them closer together and to God in this painful time.
During these months, and even after, some of them had truly "thin place" experiences, when they felt keenly the presence of God or heavenly spirits, with signs such as a rain-bow occurring to assure them that all was well, and that both God and their parents were with them even after they had entered into eternal life.
This book would be an invaluable aid to families who face the death of loved ones, or who would soon be called to do so. It is a wonderful testimony of a vibrant, lived faith.
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