When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it!” —Genesis 28:16
Author Barbara Brown Taylor considers how God shows up in all things:
The Bible I set out to learn and love rewarded me with another way of approaching God, a way that trusts the union of spirit and flesh as much as it trusts the world to be a place of encounter with God…. People encounter God under shady oak trees, on riverbanks, at the tops of mountains, and in long stretches of barren wilderness. God shows up in whirlwinds, starry skies, burning bushes, and perfect strangers. When people want to know more about God, the son of God tells them to pay attention to the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, to women kneading bread and workers lining up for their pay.
Taylor admits how easy it is to miss these ever-available encounters with God:
According to the Talmud, every blade of grass has its own angel bending over it, whispering, “Grow, grow.”
How does one learn to see and hear such angels?
If there is a switch to flip, I have never found it. As with Jacob, most of my visions of the divine have happened while I was busy doing something else. I did nothing to make them happen…. I play no apparent part in their genesis. My only part is to decide how I will respond, since there is plenty I can do to make them go away, namely: 1) I can figure that I have had too much caffeine again; 2) I can remind myself that visions are not true in the same way that taxes and the evening news are true; or 3) I can return my attention to everything I need to get done today. These are only a few of the things I can do to talk myself out of living in the House of God.
Or I can set a little altar, in the world or in my heart. I can stop what I am doing long enough to see where I am, who I am there with, and how awesome the place is. I can flag one more gate to heaven—one more patch of ordinary earth with ladder marks on it—where the divine traffic is heavy when I notice it and even when I do not. I can see it for once, instead of walking right past it, maybe even setting a stone or saying a blessing before I move on to wherever I am due next.
Human beings may separate things into as many piles as we wish—separating spirit from flesh, sacred from secular, church from world. But we should not be surprised when God does not recognize the distinctions we make between the two. Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.
Reference:
Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith (San Francisco, CA: HarperOne, 2009), 12–13, 14, 15.
Image credit: Benjamin Yazza, Untitled (detail), New Mexico, 2023, photograph, used with permission. Click here to enlarge image. During the course of every day, mystical moments are available to us, like sharing a moment with a grasshopper.
Story from Our Community:
As a recovering evangelical, I continue to search for a richer, more encompassing faith. CAC Daily Meditations have been instrumental in my spiritual journey. I truly appreciate their ecumenical nature and the variety of narratives and experiences, including both ancient and contemporary voices. I often struggle with the content and the mystical orientation, but I find it to be a healthy and enriching exercise. I was never exposed to visionaries when I was locked in the evangelical mindset. Now, I’m growing again and often share the meditations with my family and friends.
—Christopher S.
