There are sacred places everywhere
The world is still our holy grove where we wander
hunting for the tree of life …
under which we already live

(An unknown poet)

Take this very moment of reading.  It’s you and the couch or chair, in a room you love or one you don’t know, alone or with a beloved.  It’s now … and it’s so easily lost.  There’ll be future moments of reading, perhaps some novel that will inspire … someday.  But that day is not here.

Someone talked to one of the world’s most respected violinists (Joshua Bell) and stuck him down in the subway with a $3,500,000 Stradivarius.  He opened the case so people would put coins in it.  And he played some amazing Bach pieces on his Stradivarius.  Nobody stopped to listen except kids.  Little kids would stop.  Everybody else was on their way.  (Jack Kornfield)

How come we don’t stop?  Places to go, people to meet.  It’s important, you know, to get there … and as quickly as possible.  What has happened to the wide-eyed wonder of gazing upon the moment?  Someone stole it away.

It’s good to use the best china
The oldest lace tablecloth
The most genuine goblets

Of course there’s a risk
Every time we use anything or share an intimate moment
A fragile cup of revelation

But not to touch
Not to handle the artifacts of being human
Is the quiet crash, the deadly catastrophe
Where nothing is enjoyed or broken
Or spilled or spoken
Or stained or mended
Where nothing is ever lived, loved
Laughed over, wept over
Where nothing is ever lost
Or found

(Thomas Carlyle)

Let’s feel the little ridges of the lace and behold the pattern within
We have the time to do that