Temple space

 In the year that King Uzzi′ah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim; each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”  (Isaiah 6:1-3)

It’s not a temple, just my usual spot in the southwest corner of Starbucks on 75^th and Lemont. My chair is round and orange, the day gray.

A ballet of baristas weaves behind the counter, fluid movement punctuated by the clang of a pot in a sink and the comforting whoosh of steam from the espresso maker.

Students locked into their laptops pay no heed to the murmur of orders passing voice-to-ear a few feet behind them. The girl at the next table momentarily looks up, wide eyes blank and weary from her work. She gazes across the two-generation divide between us, perhaps not even seeing me as I scribble in my journal seeking the center of my soul where holiness or something very like it dwells, waiting for me to arrive.

Traffic piles up at the red light outside the plate glass windows that meet in the far corner of the room. Outside, a Pace bus ferries commuters home though the mist, waiting for the green when a shaft of gold and burnt-red lances the fog, igniting car widows in an explosion of autumnal glory as October shouts a final chorus before  surrendering to the sobriety of November.

It’s all a gift, of course, a vision of wonder beyond the capacity of human hands to create, to say nothing of mortal words that stumble and fall mute as splendor transforms a coffee shop into a holy temple, where transcendent Love arrests the meandering mind with intimations of eternity and tears of gratitude.

Who knew it could be so? We all can, I suppose, as long as we remain capable of being overwhelmed by wonders that pierce the mundane as Love awakens us to the unlikely truth of our own existence ... and thanks for the grace of being alive.

And there’s more; there’s always more of the More who makes temples of common places, teaching our hearts that prophets’ visions of divine glory are not so far as we imagine or so rare as we fear. No, but here, hidden in the fog, eager to swamp our senses and engulf our hearts in the mysterious Love who wants us and wants us to know.

David L. Miller