As I sat through our worship service on Sunday I so wanted to feel the holiness I had felt the previous two days, and yet there was nothing. I felt the cold metal chair, heard the chatty children, listened to a couple of folks testify (or brag), and watched the time slowly tick away. As disappointed as I was in the service and my lack of any reverential thoughts, I was grateful for the time I had just spent with my sister visiting family in Southeastern Idaho.
This space is holy to me - wide open fields with blue skies and white puffy clouds. A small breeze and a view for miles, stopping only at the Idaho side of the Tetons. My sister and I drove to Rigby for a cousin's funeral. The setting - the green green green of an Idaho spring - pines with yellow buds, cottonwoods beginning to share, crops peeking their baby green heads through the deep rich and newly furrowed soil, and water - water running down open ditches and canals to irrigation pipes and sprinklers that guarantee this cycle of growth and green continue. Holy ground.
We visited Julie, 68 yrs old, cuddling with her fiance (first marriage for her), playing online Yahtzee, in her tiny apartment, and their love was strong, and the place holy.
Aunt Marilyn's house was next, and even being multi-generational full, pets included, they were all happy, the dogs friendly, and the conversation genuine. Holy.
We visited three cemetaries, and although I don't "feel" my people in these spaces, I honor these grounds for holding their physical'ness, for marking their spots with their names and those of their posterity. A holy place.
My cousin's graveside service was tender, and of course, always there for the living. In a circle with cousins after Amen, we shared real talk, Idaho talk, and ask questions that one can only ask and answer in a safe holy space. And lunch, with family I see so infrequently, yet recognize as mine, again caring conversation and laughter with people who are mine, where holiness and sacred talk stays there, because the meaning lies in that setting, too sacred to take elsewhere. Holy space and place.
On the drive home that Saturday afternoon, while conversing with my sister, I heard, "You are standing in a holy space." Uninterrupted, unfiltered time with my sister, conversation that moved from light to deep to children to parents to art to work, to secular to sacred. Holy indeed.
For me any space, when occupied by those who are also witnessing the holiness, can be sacred. And I am always grateful to be blessed in these holy places.
Names on the back of my parents' grave marker - we are the next-in-line.
Aunt Carrol and Cousins
