I love the idea that any place or moment can become sacred as a result of how we engage and interact with it.

Jan L. Richardson in her book, Sacred Journeys, writes that, “Sacred space is born of relationship, of care, of what we give and receive.”

So sacred experiences can transpire simply as a result of how we choose to enter and experience spaces. It is through becoming deliberate, taking the time to pause and use all of our senses to examine that moment. Seeking to uncover, and then to savour, the holy and hallowed that can be found.

Slowing down and becoming more perceptive allows us the opportunity to recognize the divine. Attentiveness allows us to fully embrace whatever blessings are available to us in that moment of time. And yes, beauty and the hallowed exists, and can be found, even in the spaces that are messy or uncertain or intense.

So the sacred is not something that just happens in a church on a Sunday – but it is something that can happen even during what may seem to be the ordinary moments of our daily lives.

For while moments or spaces may appear unassuming, they have the power to be beautiful and holy and divine.

Like the moment I experienced the other day when I entered the shaded, tranquil woods and noticed the sun softly filtering downward through the canopy of massive cedar trees. Or the moments in the early morning where I sit my front porch welcoming the freshness of a new day, drawing on the quiet and stillness,  and delighting in the aroma and taste of that first cup of morning coffee. Or those treasured moments where one of my grandsons nuzzles his head into the crook of my neck, snuggling close,  his little heart beating time against mine.

But, instead of choosing to lean into the potential sacred of these spaces we can to tend to rush through our days, priding ourselves as we engage in multi-tasking and completing our to-do lists. And we can end up loosing touch with the sacred and its power to transform and heal and renew.

Judith E. Smith, in, “This Ground is Holy Ground” in Weavings: A Journal of the Christian Spiritual Life, describes it this way:

“We can become so focused, as I have been, on our accomplishments that we will not even see the holy, sacred, healing grace of God present around us as we travel. And if we do not stop and look, our woundedness and alienation and fatigue will grow, and we will never be able to hear our own voice. We need to rest and allow our spirits to be healed and made whole along the way, not so that we can do better or travel farther but so that we will make the journey in our own good time. And sometimes we ought to linger, perhaps for a long time, until the beauty of that place has shaped us from the inside.”

Every single day there are countless possibilities of receiving and experiencing the beauty of God’s presence and creation and provision – if we just lean into the sacredness. But it is entirely up to us. To seek and to discover, in each moment, in each space, the hallowed and the sacred.