Midlife Irish: Discovering My Family and Myself

I heard a strange expression in Ireland: “thin place.” I asked an old man to explain it to me. He looked at me as if it were a hard thing to explain, but he would try. There’s this world and the next world. Some people call the next world Heaven or Hell, but no one who is in this world has ever been there, so no one can say what it’s like there. It’s just the next world. The door is shut and you can’t see what’s behind the door. Ireland is filled with very religious people, but no one knows exactly what “the next world” is like; they just know that it is there. That’s the faith. But there are certain places on earth that are closer to the next world. There aren’t many places like that. But in these places, you are much closer to the next world than you normally are. You are so close to the next world that you can feel it: You can sense it. You can’t quite see it, but it’s very, very close. You close your eyes and you’re almost there. A “thin place” is a place that is very, very close to the next world. Ireland is filled with little spots they call “thin places.” He mentioned some places in Ireland, but for me (and I think a lot of other visiting Americans), Ireland itself is one large, extremely thin place.