“Just to be is a
blessing. Just to live is holy.” --Abraham Joshua Heschel
Holy.
It is the holiest of holy rituals I practice, and have
practiced, twice a month, on Monday nights, for the past twelve years. Almost
without exception, save for a rare skipped evening, I never miss it. Monday night dinners: me sitting at the supper
table with three very good friends, for hundreds of Mondays now. My dinner mates are always Kathy, whom I’ve
known for almost thirty years; her husband Kevin, my friend for near 20, and Dillon,
their son, who’s sat next to me at dinner from the moment he was born 15 years
ago.
No matter what is going on in our collective lives, no
matter the wacky weather or crazy schedules, or the dramas of daily existence, on
holy Monday, the four of us always, always,
gather together and break bread. Review
our just finished weekends. Talk about life, politics, family and faith. Drink steaming
cups of tea and check in.
Those dinners are holy, one of the holiest times of the week
for me. Holy: set apart, cherished, and singular. Holy: a faithful ritual that
defines and shapes my life. Holy and transcendent:
these meals are a little slice of heaven on earth where I experience face to
face the love of others, the love of God, and the love of life.
Yes, I know as a pastor, I m supposed to be all about
holiness, but guess what? You are probably more of a holy person than you know
too. You need holiness. We all do.
It is tempting to see holiness as just the stuff of chanting
monks with smoky incense, a whisper quiet church service, or the faithful
streaming into mosques and temples for Sabbath, a holy day. That fits. This
week Christians around the world will celebrate an entire Holy Week.
But to be “holy” is always about so much more than ancient doctrine or
religious practice. Religion at its best is holy. But life is holy too.
Holy: whole, contained, and very good.
All humans crave this wholeness and holiness. It’s just that we forget sometimes. Forget we want and need some things in life,
some people in life, some rituals in life, some relationships in life to be
sacred, protected, honored, and revered, like my weekly meal. Like weekly worship or daily prayer. Like weekly time with a loved one: date night
with a spouse or breakfast with a friend at a local diner. Like the long run we take every morning as
dawn awakes, or a long walk in the quiet of the woods on a Saturday morning
with the dog.
Holy. Sacred.
To be holy means we intentionally claim precious time for
thought and rest and relationships. To
be holy means we humbly recognize that there may be something greater than
ourselves in the universe, that maybe life is not all about “me”; that there is
more to existence than our five senses. More to living than just scratching
every itch, feeding every appetite, or satisfying every desire.
Something holy is always calling out to us. The hard part is listening and responding to this
deep need to be holy. Holiness is hard work.
We live in a world of intense energy and unrelenting forward
movement, the twin foes of holiness. We are up in the a.m. then rush off to
work or school. We push through a torrent of meetings and emails and texts and
competing demands. We commute back home
on a crowded highway or cramped train, try and gather for dinner (if we can
find the time), then it is off again to more activities and commitments and
finally back home to bed…and then? We do it all over again. Not very holy or
whole.
Such busyness is the enemy of holiness. Busyness tries to convince us that meaning
comes from doing. Busyness sweeps us
along in waves of frenetic grasping, from one thing to another and another and
another. Busyness splits life into a
million pieces. Busyness is the golden
calf the world worships.
Holiness is the opposite.
Holiness finds meaning in being. Holiness
recognizes that our souls need nurture too.
Holiness dares to say, “Enough already!” Holiness is still. Holiness stops. Holiness pays attention. Holiness takes practice.
God knows we all need to be holy, and not just for one week or
season or holiday, but also for this day.
Every day can be a holy day.
See you at the table.
No comments:
Post a Comment