Do brides still wear veils?
        The bride used to come down the aisle clutching her father's arm. The father handed his daughter over to the groom. But the bride remained veiled until the marriage ceremony was completed. When the minister intoned, “You may now kiss the bride…” the bride flung back her veil and showed her face.
        As I write that, it sounds almost like Islamic purdah, which requires women to be concealed behind a veil in public. They may be unveiled only in the privacy of their home, and only with their husband.
        Removing a veil implies intimacy. Even a symbolic veil. Occasionally, in conversation with someone, I have had the sense of a veil between us being pulled aside, of knowing that person at a deeper level than before.
        Occasionally, I have that sense about God, too.

Less opaque
        And so I am currently in Ireland, looking for what Celtic Christians called “thin places” -- places where the veil that hides God from us (or us from God) becomes less opaque.
        Thin places are not limited to Ireland. Some people find these moments of awe and wonder in the stained-glass magnificence of medieval cathedrals, others in the spartan simplicity of historic Quaker meeting houses. Some may find them in nature where, as some wit noted, the hand of man has never set foot; others in the flawless functioning of fine machinery.
        But perhaps because the Celts continued to value thin places while other parts of Christendom relied on rigid and authoritarian codes of conduct, Ireland seems to have more than its share of these special spots.
        On my last visit to Ireland, I walked into a circle of stones on Inishmore, the largest of the Aran Islands off Ireland's west coast. The guidebook called it a primitive fortress: stone walls encircling a safe refuge.
        The instant I stepped inside, I felt peace. The ring of walls sheltered me from a cold wind off the icy Atlantic. Daisies and buttercups danced in the bright green grass. It felt as if the sun had suddenly come out…

Numinous experiences
        I can't explain it. I don't need to explain it. The experience itself is enough.
        In a book called The Idea of the Holy, German theologian Rudolf Otto called these moments “numinous.” According to the on-line encyclopedia Wikipedia, Otto defined numinous as a “non-rational, non-sensory experience or feeling whose primary and immediate object is outside the self.”
        He created the word “numinous” from the Latin “numen” meaning “deity.”
        It's numinous moments I long for in worship services, and so rarely find – a sense of being in the presence of the holy. Sometimes an inspired choice of music will tear open the veil of routine words. Sometimes a phrase in a prayer or sermon will set my imagination soaring.
        Whenever it happens, however it happens, it's worth waiting for.