Sacred Places

Important, life changing and memory creating events often occur in special places.  Weddings and funerals often occur in churches, romantic dinners at a special restaurant, and education at school.  It is easy to suggest a broader scope, that these events occur in lots of different places, yet the assumption of a limited number of sacred places is often easily accepted.  I believe differently.  Life changing events occur any and everywhere we let others touch us, especially divinity.  When I look back I find life changing meeting with Divinity occurring in an incredibly wide range of places.  From the darkness and comfort of my bed, a moment of driving a beat-up car through the hills of western New Jersey, a moment of personal silence in a huge crowd, to a simple walk through Finland’s fields. 
 
As I reflect and think forward I would like to borrow a friend’s idea.  There are no unsacred places.  Simply, there is the sacred and the more sacred.  Anytime I am with Divinity, in any form, it is sacred.  Anytime I am in personal, intense, nurturing relationship, I am in the sacred.  Things can get, become, and go more sacred but the space I live and journey with Divinity is the sacred, regardless of the when, where, and how.
 
I often forget and wonder into space without Divinity’s Presence.  I am not sure what to call this place; however I know the state I am in during this time.  I am lost.  I have no sense of bearings.  I little if any sense of hope.  I am in a place with no wind, current, or direction.  For me, this is a dangerous place.
 
Some would think in a story of old that because “Jesus had not yet entered the town but was still at the place where Martha had met him,” (John 11.30) that there was no opportunity for the special.  There was!  For you and I today there is.  Let the story then and now unfold.  Stay close to Divinity.  Open yourself up.  Hope is a wonderful place to be.