Holy Ground

 

By Marilyn Moore

It’s late afternoon on the last Sunday in August.  There’s a quality to the late afternoon light…it’s more golden, softer in some way, than the late afternoon light in mid-summer. It’s still summer weather, with temperatures above 90, but the sun knows, the light knows, that summer is nearing its end, and autumn is approaching.  

It’s been a frantic week, with a near-declaration of economic war with our closest neighbor and most significant trading partner, Canada.  Court cases regarding executive orders on voting procedures leave me uncertain as to what the rules are, and who makes them…more on that in an upcoming blog, when/if I get it sorted out.  Cherry trees, a gift from Japan from decades ago, have been cut down to renovate a golf course.  The Strait of Hormuz is still closed, China is supplying Iran with essentials, Russia is bombing Ukraine, people are dying in Gaza, diplomatic efforts are nowhere to be seen.  The US seems to have claimed Venezuela’s oil, though the details are sketchy, and questions of legality abound.  A climate-change glacial collapse caused a flood unlike any we’ve seen, racing down the valleys of the Himalayas, on the border between Nepal and China; the death toll will not be known for days, likely months.  The videos are simply horrifying.

Fall is a busy time in Nebraska.  School starts, and I marvel again, as I do every year, how quickly teachers and students and parents and the community pick up the habits and patterns of going to school.  So many cute first-day photos…then on to the serious business of learning and building community and fall sports and choirs and orchestras and school plays and newspapers.  It’s an election year, and I’m already tired of the political ads, especially those that demonize the opponent.  (“Keep boys out of girls sports” must be this year’s must-use phrase…candidates for offices that should be far removed from deciding who plays on sports teams can’t seem to leave it alone. And that phrase, of course, is yet another stone thrown at our most vulnerable student group, teens and young adults who are trans, who just want to live their lives.)  There are many excellent candidates for public office this year; I’ve been to several campaign meetings, campaign rallies, campaign fundraisers, and I’ll go to more. I’m grateful for wise, compassionate, smart people who step forward in public service.  The amount of money required to do so, and the abuse heaped upon them, is daunting; they are brave, and I am grateful.  

And in the midst of all of that, Dolly Parton’s death gave the world a blessed one-day pause, focusing on her goodness and kindness and stellar talent, setting aside the greed and avarice and horrors of the week’s events. That day, that blessed day when the headlines were about a truly good human being, and today’s late afternoon light, a harbinger of autumn, call me to set aside, for just a moment, the frenzy of the past week, and breathe.  

A political writer who I read daily wrote this past week about the upcoming commemorative service at the site of the Twin Towers in New York, a service that is focused on the people who died, the people who tried to save them, the first responders, the families of the victims.  She likened that space to the cemeteries at Normandy, calling it holy ground.  I believe there is a human need to seek, and find, holy ground…spaces that remind us of what is deeply important, what it means to be deeply human, what it means to be in connection with one another, and with all of Creation.  

I breathe, and I think of some holy ground moments in the past couple of weeks.  Two eclipses…how can one person be so lucky.  The partial solar eclipse, viewed from the Douro River in Portugal, and the nearly-total lunar eclipse, viewed from our front lawn in Lincoln, Nebraska.  No photos of either; my phone camera doesn’t have the filter to safely photograph the sun, nor does it capture the disappearing moon.  The afterglow of the solar eclipse is beautiful, and calming…a moment of stillness.  The lunar eclipse played out in our skies for several hours, from a bright, full moon at shortly after 8:00 to a mere pinpoint of light, more like a smudge, three hours later, and then re-emergence of the full moon over the next three hours.  Holy ground…or holy skies….connections with Creation, with a universe that is vastly bigger than the planet we call home.

From the skies to the earth, Nebraska’s prairies are holy ground.  Willa Cather says, “As I looked about me, I felt the grass was the country, as the water is the sea…And there was motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running.”  Time on the prairie is time on holy ground.  Much has been said recently about the importance of “touching grass,” as a means of maintaining presence, of connecting with what is real rather than what’s on screen, of stepping away from the chaos of the moment.   Walking at Spring Creek Prairie or Nine Mile Prairie is a holy ground moment, a breathing space.   

From grasses to the earth’s water….  A little more than 70% of the earth’s surface is covered with water, creeks, rivers, lakes, seas, oceans.  Essential for life, fearsome and awesome in its power, the site of miracles and rituals and ceremonies in many of the world’s religions, and the setting for stories of exploration, danger, adventure, starting anew, and finding home.  I’ve always been intrigued by the mouths of rivers, that space where the river empties into a larger river, or an ocean, and becomes a part of something larger than itself.  Whether in reality or as a metaphor, that space is holy ground. Looking ahead at the point where the Douro River would empty into the Atlantic Ocean was a holy ground moment, a breathing space.  And at the same time, I thought of all the persons whose hearts and souls have compelled them, across countless centuries, to leave the river that they know and set out on the ocean that they don’t, in search of something bigger, some place better, perhaps, to call home. 

Those stories are holy ground, too.  The stories in There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak, one of this year’s finalists for One Book One Lincoln, are holy ground moments for me.  Three characters, spanning two centuries, two continents, and set on the Tigris River and the Thames River.  Their stories intertwine, as do the drops of rain and snow that fall on them and find their way to the rivers.  The Yazidi grandmother, telling the family and cultural stories to her granddaughter, wisely knows that stories are holy, that they must be kept and preserved and told again and again and again, because the life of the community depends on its story.

In a day or two, I’ll reengage with all the reality of the world…I cannot leave the anguish and the conflict and the very real dangers alone for long, nor can I ignore the courage and bravery of those who step forward to be the helpers and the leaders.  But for this evening, in its golden light, I pause, I breathe, I give thanks for holy ground.