Lift Up Your Eyes

 

Surprised by Holiness

“When we lift our eyes to see a hawk, lazy and still in an impossibly blue sky; when we lift our eyes to see the colors of fall, a double rainbow, a magnificent sunset, we shift our attention from the relentless seductions of obligation and detail, and consent to be surprised by holiness anywhere, and everywhere.”

Wayne Muller (Learning to Pray, p.43; Bantam Books, 2003)

          Wayne Muller, author, and founder of Bread for the Journey, asked the question: “How do we honor the holiness in things?” The holiness in things is a growing realization among progressive theologians and young people all over the world. In Grounded, Diana Butler Bass notes that the question for millennia was, “Who is God?” and now has become, “Where is God?” We have moved from a perception of God out there, distant from humanity, above all and sitting on a heavenly throne, to God within, here with us in everything we touch, and in our hearts as well. From a God mediated by priestly envoys to a God available to all at any time and any place. The alpha and omega. Our perception of the divine is evolving.

This was the message of Jesus when he taught: “you are the salt of the earth,” “look to the lilies of the field,” “behold the fowls of the air.” All his parables used the everyday things to explain the nature of God—the prodigal son, the vineyard owner, the good Samaritan. It was human beings who moved God off-planet, beyond and above us, and now we are finally beginning to understand the message taught more than two thousand years ago. That which we call "God" is with us—Emmanuel—God with us. It took two millennia for us to evolve spiritually to the point that we could grasp this—the divine is not separate from us, it is with us, within us, and within all of creation.

As Wayne Muller wrote in Learning to Pray, we can see divinity in the majestic flight of the hawk, in the beauty of every season, in rainbows and sunsets and the vastness of the oceans. We can witness the creative intelligence of the universe in the eyes of a child, in the hands of humankind, and in the fiery gallop of wild horses. God is with us. As we begin Holy Week, let us be grateful for God’s presence.

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane