A Sacred Moment in a Sacred Place

I am glad to know that I am not the only one who is aware of sacred spaces. Last weekend I was at the bluegrass jam camp at our camp and conference center in Central Wisconsin. Many of us who have been involved in all kinds of activities at Mt. Morris have known that it is a special, unique, and highly spiritual place. One of my friends says that no matter what is happening in his life at the time, all he has to do is drive down the driveway and he knows that all is well. For me it is like going home in all the best senses of that word.

Well, I was sitting talking with one of the other people at the bluegrass weekend when they said, out of the blue, with no prompting or suggestion on my part:

This is quite a place. There is a real spiritual energy here that I don't sense in many other places.

After all I have written here in the past few weeks about spiritual places (Thin Places, in that old Celtic idea) I smiled inwardly- and outwardly- to know that it is not some figment of my imagination or that simply my past experiences at Mt. Morris are the reason I feel that way.

There is of course that danger. We have such good and positive and spiritual experiences at a place that my feelings get mixed up with the place. No, at Mt. Morris it is the place. The participants in the bluegrass camp were not familiar with the place at all. It was all new to them- and some of them, like the person I was talking with- had never been there before. When that separation between the material world and the spiritual world gets as thin as it does in these unique places, it is not a secret.

There is an energy to the place. It feels alive. It courses through you and into you. It reminds you that life is what this world is all about. At a place like this even death loses its sting and can be seen in its proper context in the bigger picture of God's world.

Often that energy and power is found in the wind. As odd as it may sound to someone unfamiliar with it, that has been one of the most common connections with the spiritual at Mt. Morris. There is this point on a little hill above a creek and a footbridge at Mt Morris. That point has been the location for many a quiet moment for individuals and groups. Communion services are often held there on retreat weekends. Many of these times there is a sense of the wind. It has as much to do with the way the trees reach up to the sky there. They catch the wind and transmit the sounds down to the participants on the ground. You hear the wind long before you feel it. You know something exciting is happening.

It happened again last weekend. I went out there for a short break to get back in touch with the Spirit. I sat a little, enjoyed the beautiful sunshine on a late summer day- the first without rain in a while. I walked and took some pictures and just thought of God and the Spirit and what He has been doing recently with me. It was a beautiful calm, and calming, moment.

As I turned to walk out of the woods I could hear it. From nowhere- and everywhere- came The Sound. The Wind. It had been wonderfully quiet. It was now wonderfully alive with the sound of life. All I could do was one of my standard responses to moments like that. I looked toward the top of the trees and the barely visible sky, smiled, said thanks and gave God my favorite "Thumbs Up." I am never disappointed.

Can this happen in other places? Sure. It has. But the sacred places, the thin places are where you can make that connection more often and with a lot more Presence. Praise God for places where we can get even closer to His Spirit and Grace.