Today’s Word: Here

Well, I haven’t posted one of these for a while…Don’t be shocked! I think it’s the warming spring weather…

Yesterday I took my first real walk of this early spring, a leisurely three-mile stroll around Mallard Lake at Creve Coeur Park near my house. I had my earbuds in, listening to Yo-Yo Ma’s recording of Dvorak’s Cello Concerto in B Minor (which quickened my pace right away with its triumphant beginning), but as I rounded the first corner of the loop nearing the footbridge, the music in my ears was overwhelmed by the music of thousands of frogs in a wetlands area. Let’s just say they were having a good time and were none too quiet about it. I stopped and considered how quickly life and its fecundity pick up when the weather starts to heat up. And I thought where I was standing. It was no place special with no particular beauty — just a bog of sorts — but certainly holy ground at that moment.  Here.

Earlier in the day, I had given a morning of prayer and reflection for 70 women at St. Joseph Parish in Cottleville, Mo. For our first prayer of the morning —  a guided session of lectio divina — we reflected on the story of Moses and the burning bush, of finding ourselves standing on holy ground and needing to respond to God’s call with a simple, “Here I am.” I wrote in my journal:

“Here I am,” is perhaps the most authentic response we can make to God. “Here I am” is awareness of the present and of the fact that I am in the presence of something great and beyond myself. “Here I am” is the beginning of my day, the busy-ness in the midst of my day, and the end of the day when my head hits the pillow and I briefly try to recall when I might have experienced God.

“Here I am” is where I find myself standing throughout my day; it my openness and awareness of others and God. “Here I am” is, indeed, all that I am. It is the very best of me because it is the recognition that I am not alone and that I stand and walk —wherever I stand and walk — on holy ground.

So I continued around the backstretch, through the woods where only walkers are allowed (no bikes except for that one guy who ignored the signs). In this early spring there is no green to be found, only the dull grays and browns of winter on the way out. And yet there is a beauty in the simplicity of seeing further into the woods than I will be able to once the sap rises and the leaves start to form. I can see nearly through the woods back to the lake, noticing squirrels scurrying and a couple of ducks swimming in a small stand of water no more than a few inches deep. Why there, I wonder, with a whole lake a few hundred feet away? I would have missed this later in the spring. Holy Ground. Here.

That morning, during our second session, I asked the women to listen and reflect on this beautiful message from the Acts of the Apostles, on finding God, in whom we “live and move and have our being.”

The God who made the world and all that is in it, the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in sanctuaries made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands because he needs anything. Rather it is he who gives to everyone life and breath and everything. He made from one the whole human race to dwell on the entire surface of the earth, and he fixed the ordered seasons and the boundaries of their regions, so that people might seek God, even perhaps grope for him and find him, though indeed he is not far from any one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being,’ (Acts 17: 24-27)

In my journal, I wrote:

“In him we live and move and have our being.” The truth is, there is no life outside of this idea, whether we know it or not, whether we believe it or not, whether we want it or not. We live and move and are in God, and this is how we come to walk on holy ground, how we are set apart for lives of holiness, how we become the beloved of the creator of all.

This must become the vision I have for my life. This must be my starting and centering point. Anything else we do must flow from this source, this spring, this incarnate word of God that dwells in us.

I round the final turn and head back to the parking lot. The sun is hitting the surface of the lake and I walk into the light, aware intensely that I am alive and blessed. I could miss that, not pay attention to that, as I sometimes do when schedules and deadlines and general busy-ness wins in the competition for my heart. But today I stand here, caught in the light of late afternoon. I sit on a bench and look out at the lake. Holy Ground. Here.

Ask yourself in silence:

How eagerly do I search for God? What is my most earnest, impassioned prayer? What do I most want from God? When do I sense God living, moving and being in me?