What Makes it Holy
Of course
loss is the great lesson.
But also I say this:
that light is an invitation to happiness,
And that happiness, when it’s done right is a kind of holiness,
Palpable and redemptive
~ Mary Oliver
As I write this, I'm in the small, lavender room that I call my office. And this is where I sit with amazing people and listen and learn and almost always fall in love with them. It's funny how casual it can seem at times -- sitting with what makes up a life. Sitting with what sometimes hovers nearby as death. Sitting at our edge and in our core in this sense-making project we call life. It's "just a conversation." But, of course, it's not.
When I first claimed this room to be my office, I thought, "This will be a sacred place." I believed it would be sacred because I would call in higher wisdoms and a love way better than my own. And because we would make sense of all the crazy things that happen, and find a way to honor both the bright days and the dismal nights. And miracles will be pulled out of the air because we will open again and again towards all that we don't know. I thought all that would make this small room holy.
But even though, by grace, things like that have happened here, I feel now what really makes anywhere holy is our willingness as the flawed, fragile, fierce and fallible humans we are to try and deeply see ourselves and each other with honesty and compassion. To see all the hard, sad, frightening roads we've traveled. To see that in any moment these roads stretch both backward and forward and are full of mysteries and treasures. To know that our lives will never be "solved" like an equation. But that everything can be handled gently, breathed into, known and made whole.
What makes this room or any place or anyone or anything holy? What makes you holy? What a beautiful question to investigate. What a reverent way to live.
The photo, taken at the Art Institute of Chicago, is "The Fisherman's Cottage" (1906) by Harald Sohlberg, a Norwegian artist.
With affection and blessing,
Elizabeth