I sit here longing for landscapes into which I can escape –
physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. I long for the breeze’s
whisper on my eyelids, the dainty slow passing-by of a dragonfly, the views of
trees or mountains, or the neighborhood deer my niece has seen in recent days.
I remember last weekend’s visits to some of the old Californian missions, holy
places for Franciscans and other seekers.
I sat in a place of contemplation. Quiet. The grounds
were saturated with decades upon decades of spiritual-seeking, fervent desire
to proselytize the locals, a stamping down of foot and pen and wax seals to
proclaim this place holy. And despite the struggles for ownership, authority,
that staking of claims, the ground held the whispered prayers of the
holy-hearted ones, those who aspired only to seek communion with their God and
to feel the grace of sacred relationship. As I placed my hands on a patch of
dry gray earth covered with small hard husks from the tree canopy just
overhead, I could feel the vibration of those quietly-uttered prayers, those
two-plus-centuries of movement and stillness – all in the name of God. Simple
living, decadent sanctuaries.
I paused. I became motionless. And the constant beat I carry
within became finely tuned with the slow chants and hymns and well-handled
beads, circles of sacred sounds in seeking palms. For an instant brief but
powerful, I felt time disappear and I could have been a priest or nun, one of
the holy pray-ers. Seeker of the Divine; brown robe; beige rope around my waist
– umbilical tether from heavens to earth. In that moment I felt the question in
my veins liquefy – am I sacred first or earthly first? A spiritual being having
a human experience; a human being having a spiritual experience. The polarity
soon melted too and all that remained was my deeply felt humility, my humanity
– all of humanity’s frailness like a fragile crystal goblet, and I was filled
with holiness, the sacred communion wine in the human-constructed vessel. I
found peace.
Squatting in reverence with my hands pressing down holding,
and being held by, the very soil that has held thousands and thousands of
seekers… In an informal sense, I am ordained, through statement and
proclamation – self-decree, accountable only to Spirit and my own burning
compulsion to live in consummate union with the sacred, that which is Holy,
Divine, Of Spirit. Too, I live in fleshy humanity, riddled with foibles and pettier,
in more moments, than I can barely stand to admit.
Kneeling bent over, hands flat on dirt memories of this
union… The unity of sacred and profane is my experience now. I shared all of
this later with a wise elder friend; we ruminated over the beauty and
desirability of The Contemplative Life. It tugs at me still: to leave this world of material busy-ness,
crashing noise, the dominant focus on the outer rather than the inner.
And then I remember, I have work to do in this place, now,
with people. It is not time to flee or shirk these worldly callings. It is time
to remain here now, to show up, to offer myself and my gifts, to live in
balance: the profane with the sacred.
Even as I travel the pathways of work, carnal life,
relationships with other humans, I inhabit inside myself the landscape of the
old missions.
All blog photographs taken by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted.
