Moving Toward The Holy

In meeting today I was trying to center down and as ever my mind was turning.  Perseverating on lists of things I haven't done or intend to do.  Communications I have not responded to. Promises I have not kept.  

And these thoughts get me no closer to the Holy.  And the more I push them away the more they push in. 

I remembered something I read in the Friends Journal about how to center down and I started to look at each person in meeting and said their name silently to myself along with these words "they are an expression of the Holy." 

I was having a conversation with my friend John about this very idea of moving toward the Holy and he said something very profound.  "The Holy hasn't moved, it is we humans that have moved away from it." And you know what?  The more I think about it and reflect on it he's absolutely right.  It's sort of like those magic eye pictures.  The image is right there in front of our eyes but we can't see it.  We have not trained our eye.  

Keep looking ... did you spot the dancers yet?  ... can you see the Holy around you?  

The Holy is not far away. It's right there waiting for us once we turn off Facebook, CNN, video games, etc. etc etc -- name your distraction.  

I know a gal who just sits in the woods for an hour each day.  The Holy is a butterfly alighting on her knee.  It is the whisper of the wind in the willows.  It is the sun filtering through the canopy of leaves and making a dappled pattern on the forest floor.  

What I am most present to this Thanksgiving is the ways in which I can connect to that which is Holy.  It does not have the be the majesty of Chartres Cathedral  (and yes I've been beneath that gorgeous rose window).  It can be the most humble and simple things.  

Watch children.  You can see it unfolding before your very eyes.  Consider Georgia O'Keefe who wrote that her paintings of flowers on such an intimate level were a way of truly seeing them.  

STOP.  

There it is again.  The majesty of the Holy. 

WAIT FOR IT ... there it is again in a blade of grass and the wing of a hummingbird.  

BE STILL 

And yes, there it is again in the curve of a waxing moon or the shape of a lover. 

Queries on moving toward the Holy: 

• When do I take time to stop and be still? 
• How can I see differently what has become the chronic background of my life? 
• What practices do I have to move toward the Holy?
• What things do I consider Holy? Sacred? Spiritual? 
• In what ways have I limited my access to the Holy?  How might I expand it? 
• Who do I share my experience of the Holy with? 

Joseph Olejak