Do not imagine for a moment that your reason will ever carry you to God. Your natural light extends only so far, until fading into darkness. There, in the dark beyond your natural light, is where God's holy radiance illuminates everything beyond your imagining— a thousand times more brightly.
*"A Thousand Times More." In Jon M. Sweeny, Mark S. Burrows, Trans. & Ed.; Meister Eckhart. Meister Eckhart's Book of Darkness & Light.
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He would mail money monthly to the one-stop-light, tiny-town church, though he was not a local citizen, had never lived there, and never stopped at the church. He drove a big truck. The small sanctuary faced a main highway headed toward Macon, GA.
Before my arrival as pastor, he wrote the congregation why he planned to keep sending the gift. He wrote of the comfort the little porch light provided him as he drove by at night, reminding him of what is most important in his life by its illumination of the sanctuary.
And that is what the sanctuary pointed to - not the sanctuary itself. We can find such reminders, such pointers, around us in our daily lives. The smallest, usually unnoticed, things can serve like a veil opening or a religious icon introducing us to sacredness shining among us.
The sanctuaries that most point me to the Holy, the Mystery-here, are persons in whom I see the Light shining through. They remind me my heart cannot find its Home among things but only within the embrace of an invisible, Life-giving Grace.
This Light gives all creations their meaning, and to the extent I enjoy them, I enjoy the Light. I can prayerfully intend to become more porous to the Luminous. I, with you, and all beings, can be a living, breathing sanctuary, aglow with the supernal Sun.
*Use of photography is allowed accompanied by credit given to Brian K. Wilcox and title and place of photograph.
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse.
