Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Today’s text

Psalm 27:4-6

One thing I asked of the Lord,
   that will I seek after:
to live in the house of the Lord
   all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the Lord,
   and to inquire in his temple.
For he will hide me in his shelter
   in the day of trouble;
he will conceal me under the cover of his tent;
   he will set me high on a rock.
Now my head is lifted up
   above my enemies all around me,
and I will offer in his tent
   sacrifices with shouts of joy;
I will sing and make melody to the Lord.

 Reflection

There are places that awaken awareness of your Presence, Holy One. I have stepped into old churches and fell silent, eager to take off my shoes, bow and prostrate myself on the floor because I knew and felt you.

I felt the immensity and tenderness of your presence filling every corner of the place … and of me, and I knew this awareness was everything I needed in this life.

Silent reverence was the only suitable language to speak the quiet joy that filled me as your near beauty raised me beyond myself, beyond the day’s troubles, beyond my wounds and resentments, my sins and failures, beyond my work-a day existence.

In silent knowing, there was no doubt that we live in graced world, haunted in everyplace by your Spirit beckoning us home, if only we could hear.

Stepping into your dwelling, I knew … we each are surrounded and held in love as closely and gently as air touches the bare skin of our arms and caresses the curve of our cheeks.

Beholding your beauty, we know this love is all we need and all that really is, all else is illusion.

But where shall we go to enter the blessed place you dwell that our souls may fall silent while our hearts explode with love and wordless gratitude?

We hunger each day to know you this way, but you do not live in a home of bricks and mortar we can simply enter. You cannot be contained in any building or held within any space, although there are spaces you seem to inhabit.

You do not hide in barren winter trees stark against the morning sky, nor do you dwell in the profusion of spring for which we hope amid winter’s death, although nature itself whispers your name.

I have prayed at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican and found it no more holy, no more moving that this basement place where I come seeking you each day, this place where you so regularly find me and lift me into yourself … so that I be myself.

I have found you dwelling in the eyes and beauty of faces who love more than I know how to love, and in music that transports me to spaces in my soul where you are more real and far more lovely than my gray face in the morning mirror.

But maybe I have it all wrong. Perhaps I do not find you at all. It is you who find me, for you dwell everywhere and in everything but most often I am too blind to see and too deaf to hear.

Still, I will seek you this day, listening and looking with greater care for the Presence of beauty and love, grace and hope, dignity and care that, with joy, I may see that creation itself is your dwelling and every place is holy.

Pr. David L. Miller