Silent embrace

There are places in this world that are 'thin.' Where what we can see and hear and feel with our limited human senses weaves itself though something deeper. Such places tend to be held sacred. Perhaps they began that way, a place where the universe was simply thinner and more fluid and that brought seekers who named them 'sacred.' Or perhaps they were worn thin by use, by thousands of questing feet, a million seeking hearts, hundreds of hungry souls. I stood in such a place, before ancient stones that rang like bells at the touch of the last rays of daylight. There at their feet the ground hummed with energy outside any the world contains. A place of otherness that has drawn us to it across the millennia.

Places not so obvious can be just as powerful. I wonder about my own church, perhaps it is the nearness of other there that makes it so easily warped and corrupted. Perhaps it is a lack of understanding of the power we dwell in there that creates anger, strife, jealous possessiveness.

I have stood at the heart of our own holy place more than once and felt the heartbeat of God, felt suddenly the thinness of "reality" around me. As holy, divine, infinite intruded on the mundane.

Today I stood at the altar, fingers sliding ribbons into place in a familiar book, mind wandering along frustrated pathways. I lay my hands against the smooth linen, and closed my eyes. The world fell away in a slow shower, stretched and diminished until the street sounds became dream and unreality. Silence, deeper than an ocean, vast and endless wrapped me up, folding around me. I heard a beat low and deep, pressure in my ears, vibration in my bone. The heartbeat of the world, the breath of divinity, the endless rhythm of creation.

I could have stood for all time, rooted within eternity, singing in silent unison with the heartbeat of stars and mountains. I had stepped outside of time, grown thin. Breath called me home, the steady rise and fall of my chest separating itself from the deep rhythmic beat. I opened my eyes to the unchanged/new moment, my ears still full of eternity. I moved slowly, touching forehead, chest, shoulder, shoulder, heart; sealing the beat within. I finished dressing the altar in silence and bowed at last, low and silent, still hearing the low thrumming beat of creation deep within my bones.