Glimpses of the Sacred

“You know, it is one of the most marvelous things in life to discover something

 unexpectedly, spontaneously, to come upon something without premeditation, 

and instantly to see the beauty, the sacredness, the reality of it.

― Jiddu Krishnamurti

Sacred: from the Latin sacrāre, meaning "to devote"

I'm not sure when exactly the word sacred entered my vocabulary, nor when it became one of my very favorite words, but I do remember sitting in my former garden years ago watching a bird in the birdbath not three feet in front of me; how her little body frolicked so joyously, the sun catching the water droplets that splashed like rain out of the bowl onto the miniature roses and verbena and wooly thyme beneath it. It's not so much that I thought, Oh, this is so sacred ~ that clarity and the word itself would arrive on its own later ~ it was more that something was touched deep within, something that most often remained shrouded was suddenly accessible, and I went still and quiet, that everyday moment burrowing within, everything else disappearing, until it was just that marvelous little creature and I, our spirits rolled somehow into one. 

Most of the definitions for the word sacred have to do with religion or a deity, but the one I really love is about reverence. What a wonderful word that is, how it rolls so softly off the tongue like it does, the way those three syllables conjure its very essence. Reverence: to revere; to adore, exalt, worship; to be in awe. 

Awe is another one of those words. Like the breath itself.

Once, when I was on Molokai, I told a friend one day that I had never seen an owl in the wild. A few days later I rounded a curve on a red-dirt road out on the west end and there, sitting on a rotting fence post was a gorgeous white and tan owl. Just there. As though it had been there always, waiting, against the tropical blue sky, the dead grasses, the rusty ground. The moment we laid eyes on each other, before I could truly get what I was seeing, she took flight, everything else stood completely still while I stared in wonder for the longest time, her round face, her large wings so gracefully unfolding themselves. 

Once out walking, deep in grief as my marriage was ending, I came upon a mourning dove sitting immobile over the body of her dead partner, not even my own presence breaking her vigil. Once, I held my precious granddaughter for the first time, two hours old, as dawn broke on an auspicious Friday the thirteenth. Once, decades before that, in the stillness of night in the stillness of winter, I sat with my mother as her breath, her spirit, slowly left her body. Once, miles from any shore, a dolphin swam beneath me belly to belly, so close I could have reached out and touched her. She swam away, circled and returned, belly to belly, eye to eye. Time and again she circled and returned. Once, shortly after I moved into the home where I am living now, a great horned owl left a pellet on the old, wicker chair I sat on every morning. There it was, a big wad of stuff, with little mouse feet, other little bones, and fur, and I realized, incredulously, that sometime in the night the owl, with a wingspan almost as wide as I am tall, sat perched not ten feet from where I slept.

The sacred, it seems, arrives when it arrives, as though on wings, and like so many things in life, not when it is sought, not even when it is most deeply longed for. Personally, it has arrived when experiencing the simplest things; like every bird that has ever visited one of my birdbaths; the hum of honeybees spilling out of their hive; in bright fishes feeding off the back of an ancient sea turtle. It shows up often in music. And the moon, in her every phase; Venus rising before dawn; our precious Earth. When walking hand in hand with my little granddaughter, listening as she tells me all about her world. Watching as the afternoon sun scatters glitter on the surface of the deep blue sea, to the soundtrack of the waves hitting the shore and then retreating. It is also felt in the difficult times, when I hold my oldest daughter who is struggling with chronic illness; when my favorite oak tree split and fell in a windstorm, its loss felt so acutely; the way my heart has broken over and over again this year. It's in poetry and poets and storytellers, those gifted humans who somehow, inexplicitly, paint beautiful landscapes and seascapes with their words alone. 

Morning after morning I write circles trying to capture it, working to describe the feeling of something that is so intangible it is utterly immune to words. Trying to understand something that is simply not understandable, my attempts to point to it seeming self-involved, narcissistic even; privileged for sure. The more I think I have answers~it's about spirit, no, it's about our hearts... but wait!~the more ridiculous they seem, and the deeper the questions cut, taking me not closer to it, I realize suddenly, but farther away, and a light goes on, and I see so clearly in this moment that it just is what it is, this incredible feeling that sometimes, when we are lucky, when we are not looking for anything, arrives and washes over us, it's nothing we've done or haven't done, and it stirs our hearts in the deepest ways possible, expands us in ways we can never begin to understand~even trying to diminishes it~and wow, what an incredible gift. 

On the Solstice, I took part in a Midwinter Gathering on zoom with Krista Tippett, Lucas Johnson, and Pádraig Ó Tuama from the On Being Project. A sacred gathering on a sacred day, where each moment was so incredibly moving, not only their very beings, their grounded presence and essences, but their vulnerability, their hearts so profoundly on their sleeves, and their passion for bringing sacred community together. Plus their deeply felt words about this year, about our shared humanity, and all that we have endured together yet apart. The multitude of losses and traumas on so many fronts, how much we truly need each other; and the importance of not only naming our experiences, but attending to our wounds and our woundedness, our fathomless grief, in order that we may truly heal, thereby bringing a truly new future into being. I felt the sacred, I felt divinity, I felt reverence, and awe, profoundly in each and every moment. Grateful to be alive in this sorrowful and also amazing time. 

With Love,

Debby 

Click here for the On Being Midwinter Gathering replay