Holy Moments

During a recent phone interview with an applicant for a ministerial position, he mentioned the opportunity to walk with people in their “holy moments”. I don’t know whose term that is but I certainly recognize the context that holy moments happen. We should learn to shout about them because they often show themeselves as mountaintop experiences that slowly drift down thru the bog of our daily lives only to disappear and be forgotten.

He was referring to the raw emotion folks feel when they have been blindsided by the fleetingness of life; could be an accident, or maybe the loss of someone close, or perhaps that moment when you actually see God-the-father moving clearly in front of us. There are no pretenses. Arrogance is long set aside. There is only emotion and lots of it, memories of joy, fear, or grief. It usually involves change. Those holy moments are times when someone outside can be invited in… the only ticket needed is one of compassion.

I remember after September 11 when the world was stunned into some twisted horror… watching endless loops on television of bodies falling out the windows of the Twin Towers and then the horror of massive steel and glass crumbling into tiny unrecognizable pieces of peoples lives…. The lives lost were so numerous they could not be easily grasped, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, children, uncles. We gathered in our shock with other people, strangers really, to look in each other’s eyes and validate that our feelings were not so out of touch with anyone else’s. We did not personally know anyone who died. We did not know anyone who directly suffered. But we suffered because our sense of security was sooooo violated. Each morning we say good bye to our loved ones when they leave to work and we have this expectation that they will return to us in the evening just like they did yesterday, and last week, and last year. And it wasn’t just one family that lost… but hundreds and thousands. We found ourselves needing to touch others, to pray to God with strangers, to cry tears not alone. Those were holy moments, moments that we talked about our faith and our hope…in the midst of grieving and despair, even with strangers.

Sometimes holy moments are when we experience God’s total goodness in unexpected places. Not in the quietness of our bedroom prayers but in the filthiness of the inner city of Tijuana, or Trujillo or ?????. Places that faith and hope stand out starkly against the limitations of life. In meeting people who live with little, little food, no medicines, little schooling, we find our own faith. We have our money for projects to build a nice house, dig a deep well, roof a church… and recognize the gift is not in the THINGS brought, but in the connections of our hearts. It is not just in giving but in what we take away.

Tonight I read about a holy moment. A moment where change was acknowledged as forever. It is a moment that God must rejoice in. Do you hear it? Read it. There is more than just Day 6. http://www.mexicopilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/06/day-6-house-completed.htmlGod is good. DKU