At our team meeting yesterday, Kevin, the team member leading the prayer, began with a song by Peter Mayer called Holy Now. The song begins
When I was a boy, each week
On Sunday, we would go to church
And pay attention to the priest
He would read the holy word
And consecrate the holy bread
and everyone would kneel and bow
Today the only difference is
Everything is holy now
Everything, everything
Everything is holy now.
As the song goes on, over and over we hear: Everything is a miracle….everything is holy now. (My favorite line in the song was “So the challenging thing becomes not to look for miracles, but finding where there isn’t one.)
After the song, Kevin invited us to share spots at the retreat house that are particularly special places for us. The first place I shared about was the Chapel of the Sacred Heart, which I blogged about the first time I did a retreat here. (You can read that post here.)
The other I shared is not actually on the retreat house grounds, but on the road that connects the retreat house to Highway 45. It is the tree pictured below. The first time I saw that tree it brought to mind some of the stupas I circumambulated many times during the period I was Buddhist and lived in Nepal. Some had eyes near the top shaped very much like what looks like an eye on the tree. Although I never thought about it, I realized that I always look for that tree when I arrive at the retreat house (and indeed, walk past it almost every day when I’m here) and its presence is somehow grounding to me.
Although I didn’t share it at the meeting, here is another place very special to me here – the crucifix immediately to the right of the altar in the Ignatius chapel. There is something about the corpus without the cross that is very compelling to me. I sat for quite some time on the floor below it after our Healing Service last night.
Everything is holy, but for each of us there are some places that help us see the holy a little easier.
Creo en Dios! 