By The Rev. Marek Zabriskie
One of our parishioners recently sent me an email from Maine, where his family and he are vacationing. He wrote:
It is wonderful. I am usually out on our screened in porch, which makes a
good remote office, writing studio, and reading room. I also treasure my
afternoon walks, usually with a stop at my favorite bench in the world
(picture below). It is the place I feel closest to God.
I treasure his emails, because my friend has ALS and is confined to a wheelchair. He communicates by blinking into a camera on a computer screen to create letters and words. The photo that he attached shows family members seated on a bench and my friend in his motorized wheelchair beside it overlooking a lake with sailboats and mountains in the distance.
His mention of “the place I feel closest to God,” made me think of my own special place. When I was 18, I signed up to train with a semi-pro soccer team in Scotland. My mother insisted that I travel before joining the team.
So, I traveled from Glasgow to Oban on what seemed like the most beautiful train ride in the world, passing lochs, rolling hillsides, Highland cattle and countless sheep. My grandmother’s family was Scottish, and as the train chugged along, I felt like this was my native country.
Once in Oban, I learned about a bed and breakfast atop the steep hill overlooking the city and climbed up an enormous set of steps to reach it. I rented a room and trudged back down the endless steps to get something for dinner.
I bought a container of milk, a loaf of bread, and a hunk of gouda cheese and ascended the never ending set of stairs. Back in my room, I sat on the large granite window sill and enjoyed my meal while listening to beautiful classical music on a little red transistor radio.
As I watched the stunning sunset over the harbor and looked in the direction of the island of Iona, where an Irish saint named Columba brought Christianity to Scotland in 597 A.D., I had a revelation.
I thought of my parents’ disastrous marriage which was careening towards a divorce and a friend whose parents had both recently died of cancer and all sorts of problems locally and in the world, and suddenly I sensed that each of these was leading to something good. I sensed that in the words of Saint Julian of Norwich, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, indeed.” It was as though a veil was lifted and I could see into the future and what I saw was very good.
I didn’t know what to make of that moment. I wasn’t going to church at the time. I had been confirmed and had stopped attending church immediately. So, I didn’t think of this as a religious moment. It wasn’t until years later that I learned about St. Columba and Iona, but this experience stayed with me, and I’m convinced that it’s why I’m a priest today.
Over the years, I’ve heard others share similar experiences that they often keep to themselves. No one wants others to think that they’re crazy, but these experiences leave a mark on us. The Celts speak of “thin places.” You can find them sprinkled all across Ireland and in part of Scotland, Wales, England, Spain, Germany, Italy, and wherever the Celts traveled. Some are marked by high crosses, holy wells, springs, monasteries, or islands off the coast.
A thin place is anywhere where heaven and earth seem to have touched or a transcendent moment like watching a child being born or a loved one take her final breath. If you’ve ever had a such moment, you will never forget it or the impact that it left upon you.
In the book of Genesis there’s a wonderful story about a holy event and holy place called Jacob’s Ladder. Jacob was a conniving man, who stole his brother’s blessing. Fearing the wrath of his brother, Esau, Jacob had to flee. As he fled, he lay down one night in a field and placed a rock on the ground as his pillow. While he slept, he had a dream in which a ladder descended from heaven and angels moved up and down on it.
Then God stood at the top of the ladder and assured Jacob that the promise that he had made with his grandfather, Abraham, would be kept through him. Jacob, the conniving second son, would become the father of a great people whose descendants were too numerous to count.
Much has been made of this dream. St. Benedict notes that the rungs of the ladder represent the spiritual steps by which we draw close to God. The first step is humility. It is the key to our ascending to God. Anyone who is filled with pride cannot ascend the ladder to God.
Well, when Jacob awoke from his dream, he built an altar from stones and poured oil on the rocks, marking that this was a sacred site for him. He called it “Bethel,” which means the “house of God” in Hebrew. Today, it is the city of Beitin in the occupied West Bank of Israel, and it remains a place where many feel to God.
Where is your happy place, the place where you feel close to God, experience joy, and feel connected to the universe? Is it inside a church or is it in the great outdoors, where you have watched the sun set over the mountains or walked beside the ocean and realized that the waves were crashing to the shore to the same rhythm that you heart was beating?
About six years ago, I visited Oban for the second time. After settling into my hotel, I went in search of the bed and breakfast where I rented a room decades ago and watched a sunset that changed my life. As I climbed the long set of stairs to find it, the houses had all been fixed up, and I couldn’t tell which was the one where I had stayed the night that changed my life.
But I did find a sign on the enormous staircase that led up to the house where I watched the sunset from atop the hill. The sign noted that there were 144 granite steps to climb and the staircase was called “Jacob’s Ladder.” Indeed, it was. T.S. Eliot wrote in The Four Quartets:
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
May you return again and again to that place where you feel closest to God.
The Rev. Marek Zabriskie is Rector of Christ Church Greenwich and a lover of travel and leader of pilgrimages.
