In the wake of her 27-year-old son’s death, the author created a Lenten podcast: “Grief is a Thin Place.” The idea that grief is a thin place draws on the Celtic idea that the veil between this world and the next is very thin --a place so thin, it’s hard to tell where earth ends and heaven begins. Grief is a place so thin that it’s where the living and the dead feel one another’s love.
Each of the 39 podcasts relies on a daily reading from the Revised Common Lectionary and uses The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. The reading is used as a prompt for the author’s reflections on her own grief, and the grief of others. The podcasts open a space for grieving in lieu of providing answers. They are between five and ten minutes long.
The reflection paper contains a critique of six sermons preached on the death of a child or young person, a description of the podcast and its creation, an analysis of feedback on various episodes, and reasoning for continuing the podcast on a weekly basis.
