Holy

Almost 10 pm, and someone has just finished mowing the lawn.  Walking home after rehearsal, and after stopping to water the garden, the sky was candy aquamarine; the wide expanse of pavement, warm; the air quickly chilling as the sky darkened with each block I walked.  Closer to home, I passed through a wall of swirling insects.  I stopped to try to fathom the beginning and end of them: 15 feet up, at least 15 feet wide, and I could see more under the street lamps further off.

Earlier in the day someone had written about a place that he said gave him chills and brought him to tears to even think about.  I thought as I walked (and have thought before) that even if you don't believe in the supernatural, that all we have is the material world and this life, we give places meaning and then make them holy not through any supernatural means but by our attention to them.  By our visiting them.  By walking the paths.  By bringing all that we are along on the journey: our hopes, fears, wishes, dreams, loves, secrets, pain, devotion, blood, sweat, and tears.  Our presence gives them meaning.  The continual expression of our humanity, all of it, makes it holy.  And I don't think these places have to particularly have religious meaning, nor do I think you need to be religious or spiritual to be moved.  And these places change people, regardless of why they thought they went. And if that's true, and we give and take from those places through our mere presence, then our lives become a part of it, and we carry a little spark of it inside of us when we depart.

Passing through the insects has made me itchy, so I shall depart.