The Unexpected Holy

Tonight, I read this beautiful post on Segullah.

"The unexpected holy."

The author writes of "those moments, when the holy surprises [her], finds [her] unsuspecting, and transports [her], if only for a moment, to a sacred space."

I expect to feel holiness in the "standard" places--in a church meeting, in the temple, in prayer. When we speak of standing in holy places, these are typically the places we mean.

However, this post brought to my remembrance a few "unexpected holy" places of my own. While two of them are regular occurrences--in the car, driving alone with beautiful music playing, and during an early morning shower--some of those unanticipated sacred places are mere memories now. They were a one-time occurrence, slipping quietly into my day and allowing me to experience a moment of God's love, and his awareness of me, even as the moment slipped away as quickly as it arrived. Yet those sacred spaces, the-ordinary-transcended-into-the-holy, remain etched into my spiritual memory.

Sixteen years ago, as a sophomore at BYU, I sat toward the back of a steeply sloped lecture hall and stared down the pitched incline toward the front of the hall. I watched the screen, which was projecting various images of a European cathedral, and I furiously scribbled notes as my Art History 202 professor spoke. She spoke, as always, about crossings, transepts, and buttresses, and vaults and naves and portals. But then she began to speak of something else: of pilgrims, sometimes rich but more often desperately poor, making incomparable sacrifices to journey to these cathedrals and shrines, to experience the love of God and to do penance for their sins.

As the professor spoke in great detail of these medieval Christians, her voice cracked with emotion. She began to compare their sacrifices to what we are required to do for the Lord in our day. Fairly soon, I found myself wiping away tears, the Spirit confirming the truth of what she said. To this day, that unassuming lecture hall is a sacred place in my memory.

Four years ago, in the earliest hours after midnight, I sat in a recliner, holding two infants, and stared out the upstairs window of our tiny nursery. I was bone achingly exhausted. But as I gazed out that window, longing for sleep, I noticed the brightness of the moon, gleaming white, round, and glowing, so vivid against the deep blue of the night sky. Trees were silhouetted black against that same sky. It was a scene I had witnessed many times before, but on that night, in my absolute weariness, it was a personal message from Heavenly Father--and a message I would have missed if I had been asleep: "Beauty surrounds you, even in the thickness of the night, and even in your fatigue. You are known, and I am here."

In the wee hours of the night, that cramped little nursery became my unexpected holy place, and on subsequent nights as I sat awake with infants, the memory of that moment kept it so.

Less than two years ago, I sat in a darkened patient room with a dear friend, who had asked me to accompany her to a procedure, for moral support. I was honored to be there, and I still recall the quiet hum of that place, the hushed voices, the compassion of the doctor and staff, the hope and humility of my friend. The procedure she underwent is a wonder of modern medicine, but in that place of lab tests, raw data, sterile equipment, and calculated predictions, there was a peace and a stillness and a feeling of the Divine. That holy feeling reminded me, and more importantly my friend, "You are known, and I am here."

Just a few months later, my husband and I stood in the Muir Woods, a national park just north of San Francisco. It was my first (and so far, my only!) visit to this place. It was early in the morning; the anticipated groups of schoolchildren had not arrived yet. For an hour, we walked, barely speaking, as we gazed upwards and beyond at the magnificent trees extending, it seemed, to the heavens. The air was moist and cool, and as I pulled my jacket tighter around me, I wondered if this extraordinary place--so very alive, yet so very still--was similar in sacred feeling to what Moses must have experienced in Mount Sinai, or Joseph in the Grove. It seemed I was standing on holy ground, and I felt as though I should remove my shoes.