Where is the Holy

Genesis 28:10-19a

I remember as a child singing we are climbing Jacob's ladder. The song spoke of joining and following on our own, with no one else, although we were climbing. Jacob's dream is a bracket to being gone in exile because his brother is plotting to kill him. Why? Because he stole his blessing, the one Esau as eldest son should have received. So into the wilderness he is sent by his father and mother to save his life. Then this dream happens, years later when he returns home he will wrestle with God before he makes it back. Alone and facing death from his brother, once again. This place where these things happen is marked as holy. Stones and oil, anointed to mark the place of where even in death, even when facing an uncertain future, even when the future is a question this encounter with God is holy, life-changing.

Where is the holy? Where do you encounter the sacred? After all we face our own pandemic. We have been brought up short in facing how fragile life is, but where is our encounter with the holy? Would we even know how to recognize an encounter, or do we even take the time? 

People have discovered things by being in quarrantine. Things about their family, about slowing down from our face paced world and they have discovered treasure. The treasure of the world around them. The treasure of neighbors who sing together, celebrate together, keeping distance of course. They have discovered the fun of playing games, reading, exploring the internet together. They have discovered each other again. Do we really want to loose that again by returning to everything as normal?

Discovering the sacredness of relationship is a life-giving prospect. Finding our strength in community groups and taking the time to cheer and celebrate the wonder of it. Playing songs togeher, celebrating life's moments, taking the time to play it is all gift and all sacred. Do we really want to return to division and busy-ness and classifying each other with labels, does that really bring life? I think not.

The trouble is we have somehow lost the connection to what is sacred. We go at such a fast pace we lost our way. We don't even give ourselves a chance to revel in it when we insist everything should go back to normal. There is no normal now. We are forever changed and this is not a bad thing. Jacob is forever changed by this next segment of exile. This dream will be one he returns to in order to remember the promise of blessing. Blessing is something which returns to us a thousand fold when we realize what the blessing is. Jacob today marks and anoints it with oil. Where are the spaces of blessing in this pandemic? Have you anointed them and marked them?  It is important to take the time to take stock of them because we have encountered the holy here. It is awaiting us to mark it as such.