Its a beautiful Sunday morning in June, a day inviting both the slower pace of a Sunday as well as the invitation of Mother Nature beckoning with her delightful June temperatures and low humidity. A day holy with my rituals of Sunday, a day holy with the temple of Mother Nature in June, and a day holy by commiting to receive all that the day brings to me as a blessing…as hard as that is for my mind to wrap around at times!
Growing up in a Catholic family, holiness was taught as obeying rules and rituals and obeying the men who ministered for God. And so at 5 years old, I asked to become an altar girl and after being laughed at by the priest for asking, I announced to my parents I was no longer Catholic, indignantly saying I knew God would have said yes to my request to become an altar girl. My parents, to their credit, did not defend the priest’s response and instead encouraged me to participate in what still had meaning for me in the Catholic faith.
The joy and inspiration of my childhood faith-the majesty of Christmas midnight mass, the soothing sound of the Latin chants, the transcendent beauty of the church music and singing-did become part of the rituals and holidays created in my own non-Catholic family. For I had learned an important truth in not rejecting the holy still being offered through the Catholic faith….holy is not the obeying of rules and rituals…holy is everything, everyday, and everywhere.
Holy is the reverence I feel as I view the sunrise over the ocean as majestic as any cathedral, holy is the gaze of an infants eyes in mine dissolving all doubt of angels, holy is offering our smiles to those unknown with a frown, and holy is embracing what is true for us through experience, even if lacking in obedience. When we begin to live as the daughters and sons of God all faiths agree we are, then we begin to live in conscious awe, in conscious reverence, in conscious faith holy is everywhere.