Holy Ground

"Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground."

I sit at my keyboard this morning in the spot where a few months ago my father breathed his last.  My desk fills the space where his bed once stood.  Here in this spot, inconspicuous though it may now be, heaven's portal opened and received my father.  What that moment was like for him remains a matter of faith and hope for us.  I've often wondered.  Were there angels in this place?  Or simply the hand of Jesus lifting up my father as his body slumped down.  Whatever else might be said, I am convinced that from this place my father saw the face of God.  Holy Ground.

A friend, a colleague, a dear person transitioning from emergency room care to hospice.  I cannot help but believe that she is standing upon Holy Ground and entering a Holy Time.  How long she will remain in that Holy Space is not for us to know.  I remember Bob, another dear friend and colleague, who got kicked off hospice after a while.  He didn't die according to schedule, and no longer qualified for hospice care.  So who knows?  And yet there is the voice of God saying "Remove the sandals from your feet."

Barefoot.  Touching the ground upon which God stands.  Feet are sensitive.  Highly sensitive.  Probably an evolutionary necessity of balance.  And to touch one's feet is a moment of intimate connection.  Too bad we have not retained the fine art of footwashing, it probably should be a sacrament in the Church.  We fear such intimacy, though.  Remove the sandals from your feet.

A prairie church.  "Holy, Holy, Holy" is playing on the organ, as it always was.  One person after another climbed those well worn stairs to the sanctuary.  There they had baptized their children.  There they had buried their dead.  White steeple soaring high above the graveyard surrounding the building.  "As a called and ordained minister of God, and by his authority, I declare to you the entire forgiveness of all your sins."  This is my body.  This is my blood.  Holy, Holy, Holy.  There in that place, they saw the face of God.

There are moments in our lives that transcend the mundane reality of earthly life, but often they are hidden moments, recognizable only in the rear view mirror.  The most heartfelt prayer I ever offered is this:

Hold me tight, most precious Lord,

                That I might follow you.

Grant me grace to live each day,

                May I be born anew.

Lift me up whenever I fall,

                And never let me fade

From the grace filled light

                Of your own sight

                That turns the night to day.

"Lift me up whenever I fall. . ."  I vaguely remember falling that night.  As I lost my balance I reached for the bedpost but missed.  It was my wife, and a couple of close friends who nursed me through the night, who stopped the bleeding, who watched for signs of concussion, and most important, woke me periodically to insure that I was still with them.  Then came the humiliating reality of morning, the journey to the hospital, and four weeks of chemical dependency treatment.  And new life.  Amid the ugliness of this world's worst, a Holy Time, a Holy Space.  Behold the salvation of your God!  The hand of Jesus lifting me up.  

Russian sanctuaries are visually stimulating, almost to the point of wearing one down.  So much to see and comprehend.  But there is one common feature of them all, they are so conceived as to draw one's eyes up from the earth below to the heavens above.  Holy Space.

We don't know for sure what to do with Sacred Space.  Preserve it just as it was?  Or adorn it to resemble the glory that for the moment was associated with it?

Sacred Time.  I am convinced that one of the reasons I cannot sleep through the night is because this time has become for me, holy.  Amid the silent stillness of the dark night, I hear the voice of God.  And who can sleep?  I write.  Sermons flow.  Meditation is focused.  My time in the presence of God.  And so I keep my vigil.  Interesting to me that the most restful sleep I experience all week is Saturday mornings, after I have spent the night writing my sermon.  

There are times when I wonder why, after all I have experienced at the hands of the Church, that I remain there.  It has been for me both a place of healing and wounding, of belonging and being cast out, of living and dying.  In the months following my collapse, and getting sober, and dealing with the conflict that had arisen within the congregation, I began going to another congregation for worship.  Every Sunday, for months, I would experience a partial complex seizure during worship.  Perhaps it was a reaction to the 'unrighteousness' of the Church and my experience that provoked the seizure.  Perhaps it was my own unrighteousness in the presence of the Holy One that caused the uncontrollable shaking.  But there I was.  Shaking in the presence of God and receiving from his hand grace and mercy.

I saw a vision of the new Jerusalem.  John's Words.  Every word spoken there, a song of praise and worship.  Open gates.  Golden streets.  And the home of God is among mortals.

"You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You."

There will come a time when we will each sing our "Komm, süßer Tod",

Come, sweet death, come, blessed rest!

Come lead me to peace

because I am weary of the world,

O come! I wait for you,

come soon and lead me,

close my eyes.

Come, blessed rest!

And my heart goes back to my Father, and his last moments, here in this spot.  94 years of living in this world, and then heaven's portal opened.  We do not know how many steps each of us will take on this journey of life.  I anticipate many more in my own.  For all I know, I may have yet forty more years of wandering in the wilderness.  Along the way there are those Sacred Moments, Holy Spaces, and Beacons of God that lead us onward with all the other pilgrims.  And then the hope, that one day, one holy day, we will see the face of God.