Something happened while I was standing there on the ladder, peering into the attic, holding up the plastic tube, while my co-volunteer shoving insulation into the air blower on the ground and Steve bumped around in the roof, blowing lint and whatever else they make this dirty, gray, blowing insulation with. Something funny was going on in that roof.
Something holy.
The attic had a vent across from me, and the sunlight crossed through the dust, the beams, Steve's bent over body, leaving streaks across everything as if wet paintbrush had taken a swipe at them. The lines of the attic and the lines of light were this ridiculously beautiful geometric cross, like it had all been planned out from long ago that here, now, there would be sunlight, and dust, and the roof, exactly like it was in that minute. The dust and lint and bits of paper filled up all the light beams, and the light looked thick and heavy, and I wanted to reach out and pick it up, except it looked so heavy that I didn't think that I would be strong enough if I tried.
At the monastery in England, the incense would cloud up around the skylight and the beam of light would take on the same illusion of weight and tangibility. Everything seemed more deeply real and everything seemed to cross over from where it belonged - the light had weight, the noise of the bells sounded three dimensional, the smell of the incense was tactile.
I think of holiness as a word to describe the other. Tom Wright says that it is wherever the "thin partition between spheres becomes transparent." "We are called to live at the overlap of heaven and earth," he says, "where God's future comes rushing into the present." Where light and smell and music all dig deeper into our senses until each one encompasses the other. This is holiness, or magic, or the weight of glory.
I'm glad that there is holiness under an attic roof in Kentucky with your ears full of lint, just as much as at a monastery in Europe.
At the monastery in England, the incense would cloud up around the skylight and the beam of light would take on the same illusion of weight and tangibility. Everything seemed more deeply real and everything seemed to cross over from where it belonged - the light had weight, the noise of the bells sounded three dimensional, the smell of the incense was tactile.
I think of holiness as a word to describe the other. Tom Wright says that it is wherever the "thin partition between spheres becomes transparent." "We are called to live at the overlap of heaven and earth," he says, "where God's future comes rushing into the present." Where light and smell and music all dig deeper into our senses until each one encompasses the other. This is holiness, or magic, or the weight of glory.
I'm glad that there is holiness under an attic roof in Kentucky with your ears full of lint, just as much as at a monastery in Europe.
thanks to Tamara for the picture
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