A SACRAMENT is when something holy happens. It is transparent time, time you can see through to something deep inside time. Frederick Buechner
Moments.
I believe in special moments in which we are transported from this world to the next. These are the flashes of time in which we get to experience what I (and others) call “the holy.” And most of the time these moments come as a surprise because they are most usually ordinary and quite common. I refer to these moments as sacraments.
Sacraments have been typically reserved for the religious. Depending on the faith tradition the number of sacraments vary from 2 – 7. The religious idea of a sacrament is an action (like baptism or Eucharist) that unites an individual with a special blessing or divine grace from God.
It was Frederick Buechner that helped me understand sacrament in a much broader context. I like to look at a sacrament as any action that opens the window to the holy, to the world that exists outside our conscious one. I guess I believe in the existence of three worlds: my inner world, the world that exists outside of me, and then there is the world of mystery, of “other-worldliness.”
It is the third world that interests me most, the world of mystery and divinity. It is the world of love and wonder, complete with delight and surprise. And I think it is through ordinary behaviors that take us into that world. Behaviors that we can rightly refer to as sacraments—windows to the holy.
As my sister, at 83, approaches her final days here on earth I am reminded of the preciousness of life and, for me, an opportunity to ponder both this life and the one to come, because I do believe in God and in the unimaginable treasures of the next life. And so death becomes one of life’s most valuable sacraments.
I am forced to consider my life today as a series on ongoing sacraments. To begin with my wife and son are sacraments of love, my work of writing and podcasting, and my service to the poor in Uganda are all sacraments guiding me to the beauties of what is and what is to come.
Moments are sacraments to the world beyond this world.
May your moments bring you love and delight.
May You Dwell
In the Sacraments of Your Moments
Photo courtesy of fcscafeine at istockphoto
