Minding the Light

This query about sacred space brought me many memories of remarkable places. Places recognized through space and time as holy sites, as thin places where the veil between this world and the sacred other is transparent and slight. I recalled walking the worn and ancient stone labyrinth in Chartres Cathedral beneath the stained glass rose window.  I recalled an eerily silent two-hour walk through the ruins of Chaco Canyon, one raven the only sign of life.  I recalled a small chapel on Crete, dedicated to St. Peter the Fisherman, where stray cats slept on the old wooden pews. And then I remembered this poem I wrote many years ago.

Easter Morning

I have looked everywhere.
I have looked for a long time.

I found you once
on a tidal marsh on Cape Cod.
Working there,
with souls more lonely than mine,
needing wisdom I didn’t know I had.

 I found you once in New Hampshire
in a small church,
the sun through cobalt, emerald, ruby and gold,
the air filled with sweet sopranos.

 And trout fishing on early summer streams
deep in the woods,
the light a hundred little points,
the fish flashing out of the water.

You have come when I’m not looking,
yet my eyes, fully opened,
were ready.

I hear my daughter
laughing in the next room.
My house is full of pleasure.

I fill the wineglasses of friends
and wonder at the design that brought them
all to our home this night.

I breathe the clean air of a rainy
northwest morning.
It fills my day with pine
and cedar and mud and lilacs.

I have looked everywhere.
I have looked a long time.
You have come when I am not looking.
— Peg Edera