You might
think you would come upon it, covered with vines, a fairy castle
overgrown with thorny roses, hidden in a magic valley or a mountain
cleft. The thing about holy ground, twiddling its thumbs on the
far side of some wilderness, is that it ought to be hard to get
to. It ought to take some effort, require at least a torn and
ragged treasure map, hard to decipher, a cryptogram or riddle.
Or, how's this? Holy ground jumps you from behind with its hands
around your throat and pulls you to itself until you, exhausted,
say, "Uncle", or rather, "Lord.". And "I
give up." Some say to find holy ground and its saving grace,
one has to be a fugitive like Moses, on the lam, hiding some grim
secret of murder or deceit. The ticket is, of course, our sin.
That is about the last way any of
us want to gain entry. A lot of people have good intentions. They
hear the call. They say they want to go.They make appointments,
plans, promises. But they will not pay the price. This is what
it costs: You have to give up seeing your failure, sin and inadequacies
as cause for frustration or despair. You have to believe that
God is more real and powerful and effective in your life than
you are.
Entry to holy ground requires us
to die to our trust in ourselves and turn aside from whatever
we have been placing our sense of worth and security in to look
at the great sight.
I am amazed that Moses did it. You
recall when God summoned him to holy ground, Moses was herding
his father-in-law's sheep on the far side of the wilderness. He
ended up here because he killed an Egyptian who was beating a
Hebrew, one of Moses' kinsfolk. After taking justice into his
own hands, he fled to Midian to escape the wrath of Pharaoh. There
out in the countryside near Mt. Horeb, he saw a bush aflame and
said, "I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and
see why the bush is not burned up." Think of it. The liberation
of the Hebrew people from slavery and much of the rest of salvation
history turned not on this man's skill as a shepherd, but on his
capacity for wonder.
-
From Vol. 13, No. 3 Autumn, 2001
Quarterly Reflection on the Contemplative
Life
