Take off your sandals...

 

Holy Ground

“Human life may be finite, destined for dirt and death; but the ground and all that came from it and was connected to it, claimed Tillich, was drenched in the divine, the source of infinite holiness. Tillich did not mean that God was literally soil—he stressed that God is not an object—but God, the numinous presence at the center of all things is what grounds us.”

Diana Butler Bass (Grounded: Finding God in the World: A Spiritual Revolution, p. 18; Harper One, 2015)

          On the dedication page of her book, Grounded, Diana Butler Bass included a few lines from Wendell Berry:

“Make a story

Show how love and joy, beauty and goodness

Shine out among the rubble.” 

I couldn’t help thinking about Ukraine and the pictures from Bucha; of the people mourning and burying their dead. Love shining out among the rubble. The mass graves hastily dug to remove both the horrific images and the threat to health that dead bodies pose. Will this now be forever holy ground? Will it become a shrine to those who lost their lives because of a lie about Nazis living there? What purpose is this loss life serving?

Paul Tillich worked as a chaplain during World War II, and as such spent vast swaths of time burying the dead. He wrote those observations above while digging graves for fallen soldiers. Battlefields will always be holy ground because so many people are buried there.

If you ever want to experience your soul at peace, go to a cemetery, and sit among the grave markers. People are universally silent there because they know they are in the presence of holiness. One of my favorites is the old cemetery in Murphy, NC, where a slew of my relatives rest. There is no more peaceful place than there, high up the rocky, terraced hillside, away from everyone else, you can sit on the earth and listen to the wind rustling through trees.

One thinks of God’s admonition to Moses at the burning bush: “Do not come any closer. Take off your sandals, for the place you are standing on is holy ground.” (Exodus 3:5) The truth is we are always standing on holy ground—because the numinous presence at the center of life grounds us and all of creation. God is in the soil; God is the soil of the earth and everything that springs from it, including us, is drenched in the divine.

                                        In the Spirit,

                                        Jane